WPR09CA198 · Better Burn LLC/Startube DIV EXEC 162F
Rotorway International Better Burn LLC/Startube DIV EXEC 162F · Accident: dynamic rollover during landing
From Stellar Airpark (P19) to Stellar Airpark (P19)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09CA198
- 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
Better Burn LLC/Startube DIV EXEC 162F
- Aircraft type
- Better Burn Llc/startube Div EXEC 162
- 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
- N333ST
- Operator
- RotorWay International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stellar Airpark (P19), Chandler, AZTo Stellar Airpark (P19), Chandler, AZ
- 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
- Dynamic rollover
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor said the student was practicing a stable hover at 2 to 3 feet altitude, when the helicopter descended with a slight drift to the right. The student said he made a correction and thought the helicopter might touch the ground and lift up again. When the right skid contacted the taxiway, the right rear skid shoe stuck in the asphalt surface and the aircraft rolled right, pivoting on the right skid. The flight instructor immediately bottomed the collective and pushed the cyclic left; however, the aircraft continued to roll onto its right side. Subsequently, the tail boom was bent up and partially separated, the windscreen structure was broken, the main rotor blades were damaged, and the fuselage was wrinkled. The flight instructor said the helicopter belonged to Rotorway, the kit manufacturer, and was used for factory flight training. The company had equipped the skids with prototype skid shoes approximately 10 inches in length that were flat and extended laterally beyond the skids. When the aircraft touched the ground with lateral movement, the aft right skid shoe dug into the asphalt causing the aircraft to roll right. The flight instructor said that after this accident, the company modified the skid shoe design by rounding the shoes to conform to the landing skids.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the flight and delay in taking remedial action to prevent the helicopter from touching down while drifting. Contributing to the accident was the design of the skid shoes.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09CA198
- Event ID
- 20090416X11934
- Case number
- WPR09CA198
- 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: 61b92727cbccb85f885e3a25f3d2bcc28434ff5ceb7989de2cbf84715daea41c; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:56:17.497Z.