WPR09LA350 · Bielawa ROTORWAY E 162F
R L Bielawa Associates Bielawa ROTORWAY E 162F · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Sequim Valley Airport (W28) to Sequim Valley Airport (W28)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09LA350
- 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
Bielawa ROTORWAY E 162F
- Aircraft type
- Bielawa ROTORWAY
- 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
- N3213K
- Operator
- R L Bielawa Associates
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sequim Valley Airport (W28), Sequim, WATo Sequim Valley Airport (W28), Sequim, WA
- 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
- Maneuvering · hover
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a stationary low hover of the recently built experimental helicopter, it suddenly and without warning rotated rapidly in a counter-clockwise direction around its longitudinal axis, and immediately impacted the ground. The investigation determined that one of the main rotor blades had failed (disbonded), leading to an immediate loss of control in flight. The composite blade, which was designed specifically for use on one manufacturer's experimental helicopter, was being used on another manufacturer's experimental helicopter, as allowed by its experimental designation. Due to the lack of sufficient engineering, manufacturing, and testing data, the precise initiating factor of the disbonding event could not be determined.
Probable cause
The failure (disbonding) of a composite main rotor blade for undetermined reasons, leading to an immediate loss of control in flight during hover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09LA350
- Event ID
- 20090716X55303
- Case number
- WPR09LA350
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2009-07-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 6ef2d7aa547fdd4e467aa7eeb9ea8e8aa00b7210682a82bebb2cfd5bfd63a009; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:53:58.932Z.