MIA08CA202 · Schweizer 269C-1
Bristow Academy Schweizer 269C-1 · Accident: hard landing
From Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX) to Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA08CA202
- 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-1
- 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
- N1901M
- Operator
- Bristow Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX), Titusville, FLTo Space Coast Regional Airport (TIX), Titusville, 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
- Landing
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student pilot were conducting flight maneuvers in a helicopter. During one of the maneuvers, the instructor simulated a forced-landing. The student pilot entered the helicopter into an autorotation. Upon reaching about 200 feet above the ground, the student pilot pulled aft cyclic and raised the collective. The main rotor rpm dropped rapidly and forward airspeed decreased. The instructor then took over the controls. The helicopter subsequently landed hard and the main rotor blades made contact with a tree and the helicopter's tail section before the helicopter came to rest on its right side.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's delayed remedial action during a simulated autorotation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA08CA202
- Event ID
- 20081004X12054
- Case number
- MIA08CA202
- 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. 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: d6a318ea660196e7f7986286af1a0c00341a65535e94af7d60161c53e1747088; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:23:55.990Z.