ERA09LA323 · York Ronald J ROTORWAY 162F
York Ronald J ROTORWAY 162F · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Edward F Knapp State Airport (MPV) to Edward F Knapp State Airport (MPV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA323
- 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
- 1 · 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
York Ronald J ROTORWAY 162F
- Aircraft type
- York Ronald ROTORWAY 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
- N162RY
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Edward F Knapp State Airport (MPV), Berlin, VTTo Edward F Knapp State Airport (MPV), Berlin, VT
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The experimental amateur-built helicopter was approaching an airport when witnesses heard a “pop noise” and saw it nose down, “straight into the ground.” The main wreckage was located about 360 feet from a treeline. There were no skid marks and no evidence of tree impact. The majority of the helicopter was consumed in a postcrash fire, which precluded a thorough examination. Debris from the aircraft was located about 1/2-mile from the accident site, on what would have been a left base to the runway. Additional items, including cabin door plexiglass material and a piece of horizontal stabilizer fin, extended aft of the impact site about 320 feet. The main rotor system was collapsed downward, and the swashplate assembly and flight control system were destroyed. The main rotor blades exhibited fire damage, and appeared to have “very little” impact damage, with no notable damage to the leading edges. The tail boom was melted from the fuselage attach point to 2 to 3 feet forward of the tail rotor gearbox, which was rotated without binding. The tail rotor blades were broken near their bases, and one blade was impaled in the ground. A postmortem examination of the pilot, who was also the builder, did not reveal any preaccident medical anomalies.
Probable cause
A loss of control in flight for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA323
- Event ID
- 20090605X40032
- Case number
- ERA09LA323
- 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: 70cd1f4bd7fc10d835f84591576d407823ac5cf33dc2889b4460bd906544057a; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:10:31.172Z.