MIA07LA049 · McDonnell Douglas 369FF
McDonnell Douglas 369FF · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Placida, FL to Peter O Knight Airport (KTPF)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA07LA049
- 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
McDonnell Douglas 369FF
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas 369
- 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
- N819BP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Placida, FLTo Peter O Knight Airport (KTPF), Tampa, FL
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Rotor system, tail rotor hub pitch link › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot elected to land in an open field that was used as an overflow parking lot for a restaurant. The area was empty upon his arrival. At the time of his departure, the helicopter was surrounded with vehicles. During the liftoff, at about 30 feet above the ground, a witness and the pilot reported hearing a loud bang. The witness saw something black, about a foot long, fly off the tail rotor section. The helicopter immediately began an uncontrollable spin, descended, and crashed into trees. Postcrash examination of the helicopter revealed a section of the tail rotor pitch change control rod and bellcrank clevis were fractured and missing. Metallurgical examination of the remaining bellcrank and rod showed fractures consistent with a bending overload fracture. Examination of the remainder of the helicopter control systems, structure, and engine showed no evidence of precrash failure or malfunction.
Probable cause
The in-flight separation of the tail rotor pitch change control rod and bellcrank during takeoff-initial climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA07LA049
- Event ID
- 20070213X00174
- Case number
- MIA07LA049
- 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: 0989751c25e52d568e462f7851333ae6adc8502fe404fd4a4b5c623e2d2643f8; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:36:20.189Z.