CEN09IA003 · MD Helicopter Inc MD 900
California Shock and Trauma Air Rescue MD Helicopter Inc MD 900 · Incident: flight control system malfunction/failure en route
From Hale County Airport (KPVW) to Grand Prairie Municipal Airport (KGPM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09IA003
- 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
- Incident
- 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
MD Helicopter Inc MD 900
- Aircraft type
- MD Helicopters MD-900
- 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
- N902RN
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hale County Airport (KPVW), Plainview, TXTo Grand Prairie Municipal Airport (KGPM), Grand Prairie, TX
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight, the helicopter experienced a hard right yaw and subsequent left nose tuck. The pilot was able to regain control of the helicopter and reduce the airspeed to under 100 knots. The flight continued to its destination without further incident. An examination revealed that the vertical stabilizer control system adapter failed. Metallurgical examination revealed that the failure mode was reverse bending fatigue. The vertical stabilizer control system adapter has since been redesigned. Installation of the improved design is now required by an Airworthiness Directive.
Probable cause
The failure of the vertical stabilizer control adapter due to reverse bending fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09IA003
- Event ID
- 20081008X71938
- Case number
- CEN09IA003
- 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: 46533438926cedad1ffa09ba58d095dd96d0202262f3b12fe37cd2755f30be00; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:26:23.477Z.