MIA08LA199 · Eurocopter AS-350-BA
Liberty Helicopters Eurocopter AS-350-BA · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Linden Airport (LDJ) to Linden Airport (LDJ)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA08LA199
- 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
Eurocopter AS-350-BA
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter AS-350
- 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
- N906BA
- Operator
- Liberty Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Linden Airport (LDJ), Linden, NJTo Linden Airport (LDJ), Linden, NJ
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor was monitoring the student pilot during a 180-degree autorotation as part of the flight training. The maneuver was entered at 700 feet above the ground and at 100 knots. Once the intended spot was made for the 'power-on' recovery, the flare was started. As the flight instructor advanced the fuel flow control valve into the flight position, the helicopter started to settle and the low rotor speed horn came on. The flight instructor took over the controls advising the student pilot that it was going to be a run-on landing. During the landing, while in the ground run, the nose of the helicopter pitched forward as the skids dug into the mud. The flight instructor pulled back on the cyclic to prevent the blades from contacting the ground. The helicopter came to rest in the upright position in the grassy area. Post accident inspection of the helicopter’s main rotor system revealed that the 2,167 hours time in service Starflex component had two of its three arms fractured. Examinations of the fracture surfaces revealed no indications of any pre-existing damage to the areas. The fractures were consistent with overstress and unusual loads, which were produced during abrupt flight control inputs with low main rotor RPM.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s delayed remedial action (flight control inputs) during a practice autorotation/run-on landing resulting in fracture damage to the main rotor system Starflex.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA08LA199
- Event ID
- 20081007X11215
- Case number
- MIA08LA199
- 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: e2f23ca32dc2333ac035220f44ea31761cbec036e0f0487d9c592f6cf969e2fd; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:25:12.260Z.