NYC08LA129 · Sikorsky S-58HT
St. Louis Helicopters Sikorsky S-58HT · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure while maneuvering
From Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB) to Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08LA129
- 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
Sikorsky S-58HT
- Aircraft type
- Sikorsky S-58
- 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
- N1078T
- Operator
- St. Louis Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB), Parkersburg, WVTo Mid Ohio Valley Regional Airport (PKB)
- 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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 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 helicopter was performing external load operations, and was removing a tower from the top of a 620-foot tall smoke stack. After lifting the load clear of the smoke stack, the pilot observed an "over torque" condition on the torque indicator. Several seconds later, the pilot felt a high frequency vibration through the helicopter, and shortly thereafter the tail rotor assembly separated from the helicopter. While the helicopter yawed through two 360-degree rotations, the pilot released the external load, reduced the collective pitch, and performed an autorotation. Postaccident examination of the separated tail rotor assembly revealed that one of the four blades had separated in-flight. Detailed examination of the separated blade revealed that its skins had cracked due to fatigue, and that the blade then separated due to overstress. The adjacent and overlaying doublers also cracked, likely due to fatigue, but no fatigue striations were found on those members. Some ductile dimples were also found in the damaged regions, indicating that at least part of the propagation was by unstable crack growth. The skin fatigue cracks were completely hidden by the overlying doublers, making detection impossible unless the doublers either cracked or were removed. Cracks in the doublers would have been visible on the inboard side of the blade, but not on the outboard side, where the inspection/repair tag covered most of the doubler. The bonds within the blade appeared to be in good condition, and no corrosion was found, suggesting that the blade failure was the result of a fatigue life issue. The helicopter’s maintenance manual specified that the tail rotor blades had no life limit, provided that certain flight restrictions were observed, but the investigation was unable to determine whether the helicopter ever exceeded any of the specified flight restrictions. None of the tail rotor blades were in compliance with an existing airworthiness directive, which required the installation of an abrasion strip along the entire length of the blade leading edge; however, it was not clear if this non-compliance affected the failure.
Probable cause
The fatigue failure of a tail rotor blade during an external load lift.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08LA129
- Event ID
- 20080409X00442
- Case number
- NYC08LA129
- 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: 944a449f4d47ecc1f09e15b581fc439440dc5fa4eb9bc0e7d55b78d258d59c93; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:30:45.894Z.