CEN09CA203 · Bell 407
City of Dallas Bell 407 · Accident: hard landing during autorotation
From Dallas Executive Airport (RBD) to Dallas Executive Airport (RBD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09CA203
- 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
Bell 407
- Aircraft type
- Bell 407
- 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
- N2592T
- Operator
- City of Dallas
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dallas Executive Airport (RBD), Dallas Exec Air, TXTo Dallas Executive Airport (RBD), Dallas Exec Air, 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
- Autorotation
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was practicing a forced landing with a certified flight instructor (CFI) providing instruction. After the maneuver was initiated, the CFI recognized the helicopter was not settling quickly enough so he limited the amount of collective the commercial pilot could apply. As the helicopter slowed, the main rotor revolutions per minute (rpm) slowed. After the rear of the skids touched down the main rotor rpm continued to decay, and the front of the skids dropped eight to 10 inches onto the runway. During the landing two main rotor blades contacted both auxiliary fins on the tail boom. Examination of the damaged main rotor blades revealed substantial damage due to delamination and inner core damage on both blades.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to maintain adequate main rotor rpm and the failure of the CFI to provide appropriate instruction during the maneuver.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09CA203
- Event ID
- 20090311X25311
- Case number
- CEN09CA203
- 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: 1f577db5bd7cbe46a4db000c59fc13b9db1ba6f60a8828e37d465802173ef8e1; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:49:46.421Z.