DEN07LA044 · Marino Exec 162F-1995
Marino Exec 162F-1995 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Miami County Airport (K81) to Lawrence Municipal Airport (LWC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN07LA044
- 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
Marino Exec 162F-1995
- Aircraft type
- Marino EXEC 162
- 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
- N113JD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami County Airport (K81), OSAWATOMIE/PAOL, KSTo Lawrence Municipal Airport (LWC), Lawrence, KS
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
- Rotor system, tail rotor › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Approximately 15 minutes into the flight, the tail rotor failed, and the helicopter entered an uncommanded turn to the left. The pilot initiated an autorotation to an opening in a wooded area. The pilot flared the helicopter over the trees, and the helicopter settled into the trees. As the pilot increased the collective, the helicopter rolled to the left and came to rest inverted in the trees. Examination of the helicopter by the pilot and a mechanic revealed that the tail rotor drive system uses three belts interconnected via pulleys at various points in the tail boom, to drive the tail rotor. The intermediate tail rotor drive belt was shredded and destroyed. The forward and aft tail rotor drive belts were intact and undamaged. At the time of the accident, the tail rotor drive belts had accumulated approximately 80 hours. The tail rotor drive belts had a life limit of 250 hours. The reason for the failure of the tail rotor drive belt could not be determined.
Probable cause
the failure of the tail rotor drive belt for undetermined reasons. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN07LA044
- Event ID
- 20070111X00038
- Case number
- DEN07LA044
- 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: e1a5fcfdfdad34025abf55b2446e759d25e90939ab71d37c113d5b1ed9bdb776; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:52:03.572Z.