LAX08CA069 · Schweizer 269C
Airwork Schweizer 269C · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08CA069
- 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
Schweizer 269C
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer 269
- 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
- N958CP
- Operator
- Airwork
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), Las Vegas, NVTo 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated flight instructor (CFI) and student were practicing pinnacle approaches. During the last 50 feet of the approach, the main rotor rpm began to decay as the student was raising the collective. The CFI advised the student to roll on some throttle, and also reached for the throttle. The student continued to increase the collective, and the main rotor rpm decayed further. The instructor took full control of the helicopter and completed a steep slope landing. After the helicopter was on the ground, the instructor found that half of the collective was pulled in as well as full right cyclic in order to keep the helicopter stable on the slope. The CFI lifted the helicopter from the slope, and started to go into a hover, slowly letting the helicopter drift to the left away from the slope. The helicopter started to settle, and the instructor could not lower collective to roll the throttle on to gain power. The helicopter was continuing a drift to the left when the tail stinger and tail rotor contacted something on the slope. The helicopter began an immediate and rapid right yaw. The CFI rolled the throttle off to arrest the rotation, and the helicopter stopped spinning. The helicopter landed softly, but rolled over due to the steepness of the slope. The pilot reported no prior mechanical malfunctions.
Probable cause
The certificated flight instructor's delayed remedial action, and inadequate supervision while landing on a pinnacle. Factors contributing to the accident were the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing, and the student's failure to maintain rotor rpm.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08CA069
- Event ID
- 20080430X00566
- Case number
- LAX08CA069
- 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: e09e7c71f3ce754fd0d977565355cbf5127d7aee88bb6c73d9dc54323d565d40; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:35:12.052Z.