LAX07TA029 · Eurocopter France AS350B3
Eurocopter France AS350B3 · Accident: hard landing while maneuvering
From Apple Valley Airport (APV) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07TA029
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Eurocopter France AS350B3
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter AS350
- Category
- Helicopter
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N109HP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Apple Valley Airport (APV), Apple Valley, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Maneuvering · hover
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Hard landing
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Collective, improper use of
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter landed hard during a practice hover autorotation. The purpose of the flight was for the commercial pilot to receive training from the certificated flight instructor (CFI). The flight consisted of the commercial pilot performing about five straight-in practice autorotation maneuvers, where the maneuver was performed by initially lowering the collective control. After the flight, the commercial pilot configured the helicopter in a hover taxi to a concrete parking area, where the flight was to terminate. As the helicopter became aligned with the intended parking area it remained in a hover about 3 feet above ground level (agl). The CFI announced "hovering auto" and subsequently rolled the throttle to the idle position. The commercial pilot reacted by abruptly lowering the collective to the down position. As soon as the CFI perceived that the commercial pilot had pushed the collective downward, he attempted to raise it. The helicopter stuck the ground hard in a level attitude. The CFI reported no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter prior to impact. According to the helicopter's flight manual, the first instruction in an autorotation landing from hover is to "not reduce collective pitch."
Probable cause
the pilot's improper use of the collective control during a practice hover autorotation, which resulted in a hard landing. A factor in the accident was the certificated flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the maneuver.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07TA029
- Event ID
- 20061206X01745
- Case number
- LAX07TA029
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 01a4cadbf300249ab69e95953d82c7b7823f4e3c8805eb81249b9532a8271ffd; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:15:39.941Z.