SEA08CA055 · Brooks Exec 162F
Brooks Exec 162F · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Santa Maria Public Airport Captain G Allan Hancock Field (SMX) to Santa Maria Public Airport Captain G Allan Hancock Field (SMX)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA08CA055
- 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
Brooks Exec 162F
- Aircraft type
- Brooks 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
- N66012
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Maria Public Airport Captain G Allan Hancock Field (SMX), Santa Maria, CATo Santa Maria Public Airport Captain G Allan Hancock Field (SMX)
- 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 in ground effect
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
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 was hovering his amateur built experimental helicopter for the first time. Upon liftoff, the helicopter began drifting to the left, and the pilot lowered the collective without controlling the drift to the left. The left skid contacted the ground, and the helicopter experienced dynamic rollover and rolled over coming to rest on its left side. The pilot had a private pilot certificate with a single engine land airplane rating. He was not rated in helicopters and his total time in rotorcraft was 12 hours, all of which were dual instruction in the accident make and model of helicopter.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the helicopter during hover. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's lack of experience in rotorcraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA08CA055
- Event ID
- 20080117X00070
- Case number
- SEA08CA055
- 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: 3eda05ae6b4a9e7eb7c884abd69832bb8025457fc4ff5ac7bde713da9ab42086; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:13:17.555Z.