WPR10CA023 · Boykin Stephen Vance ROTORWAY E
Boykin Stephen Vance ROTORWAY E · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Meiners Oaks, CA to San Luis Obispo, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10CA023
- 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
Boykin Stephen Vance ROTORWAY E
- Aircraft type
- Boykin Stephen Vance 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
- N496SB
- Operator
- Boykin Stephen V
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Meiners Oaks, CATo San Luis Obispo, CA
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that he completed an emergency off-airport landing, in mountainous terrain, to avoid poor weather and fog during a cross-country flight in the single engine helicopter. He reported that he sat in position for about forty minutes to burn off fuel and "…lighten the aircraft." The pilot then lifted off and repositioned the helicopter to a nearby dirt road. The pilot sat in position for an additional hour to "burn off as much fuel as I could to lighten the ship." The pilot departed a second time; however, during the takeoff the helicopter "didn't have enough lift" and subsequently settled and collided with the terrain. The pilot reported that he thought he was taking off into the wind, instead he took off with a tailwind. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and tailboom assembly. No preimpact mechanical failures were reported.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper preflight planning which resulted in a takeoff with a tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10CA023
- Event ID
- 20091019X81850
- Case number
- WPR10CA023
- 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: a88c14b9c092fa520be2e329c5ede602dc10ba1a118ab38fc662d1c455f8bb3b; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:25:28.598Z.