DFW08TA066 · Hughes OH-6
Hughes OH-6 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Marfa Municipal Airport (MRF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW08TA066
- 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
Hughes OH-6
- Aircraft type
- Hughes OH-6
- 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
- N66372
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Marfa Municipal Airport (MRF), Marfa, TXTo 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
- Defining eventThe 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 engine power (total)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft handling/service
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot/air interdiction agent was engaged in a United States Custom and Border Patrol (CBP) mission in a single-engine turbine equipped helicopter when the engine stopped producing power and the helicopter descended rapidly from a height of 30-50 feet above the ground. The pilot maintained directional control and made a hard landing in a wash-out. The helicopter remained upright, but the skids were completely spread, the tail rotor blades were damaged, and the fuselage sustained structural damage. Further examination of the engine revealed that a castellated nut used to secure the governor lever control rod to the idler bell crank had come completely loose, and the cotter pin that secured the nut was missing. The engine had been replaced 5.1 hours prior to the accident by a contract maintenance facility. The mechanic stated that during the first engine run-up, he discovered an oil leak on the left side of the engine. As a result, the engine was shut down and the linkages on the left side of the engine were disassembled, including the governor level control rod assembly. During the reassembly, he got distracted by a phone call, which delayed him from completing the repair. As a result, when he returned to complete the repair, he got "tunnel vision" and forgot to install the cotter pin during the reassembly process, which would have kept the castellated nut that secured the attachment bolt for the governor level control rod from loosening. According to CBP, their agency was responsible for the oversight of this maintenance and the helicopter was returned to service in accordance with the military technical manuals. However, there were no established inspection procedures to properly accept an aircraft that had just undergone a major repair. In addition, a review of the OH-6A Technical Manuals revealed that only a standard castellated nut and cotter pin was needed to properly install the governor lever control rod, while the more recent Hughes 500 repair manual and an FAA Airworthiness Directive required a castellated nut with fiber inserts to prevent the nut from backing off.
Probable cause
The contract mechanic's failure to properly secure the castellated nut that attached the governor lever control rod to the idler bell crank. Contributing to the accident was the lack of maintenance oversight by the operator.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW08TA066
- Event ID
- 20080213X00185
- Case number
- DFW08TA066
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 1e7e8f4dad90dfb1965350e1432c19ee80118bc808d4569cbd447b03cd41792b; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:22:08.927Z.