K & S Helicopters McDonnell Douglas Heli Co 369E accident
McDonnell Douglas Heli Co 369E · Accident: aircraft structural failure while standing
From Turtle Bay Resort Heliport (HI58) to Turtle Bay Resort Heliport (HI58)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA060
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
McDonnell Douglas Heli Co 369E
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas 369
- 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
- N551CR
- Operator
- K & S Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Turtle Bay Resort Heliport (HI58), Kahuku, HITo Turtle Bay Resort Heliport (HI58), Turtle Bay, HI
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Standing · engine(s) operating
- 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
- Aircraft structural failure
- 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 structures
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter was positioned on a landing platform. Four passengers had boarded the helicopter for a sightseeing tour. The pilot brought the engine up to flight idle, preparing for takeoff, when the left rear landing skid strut collapsed. The helicopter tilted to the left rear, and the tail skid and vertical stabilizer struck the ground and sustained damage. The tail rotor blades also struck the ground. The pilot shut down the engine and stopped the rotor using the rotor brake. A postaccident examination of the left rear landing gear strut revealed that the strut fractured at the bolt hole where the strut was attached to the drag brace. The struts had been inspected 13 days (30.2 flight hours) prior to the accident as part of a 100-hour inspection in accordance with the manufacturer’s maintenance inspection program. Examination of the broken strut (left rear) revealed that it fractured due to a fatigue crack that initiated from the circumference of one of the bolt holes used to secure the strut to the drag brace. The intact strut (right rear) was also examined and found to have fatigue cracks growing outwards from the circumference of the two bolt holes used to secure the strut to the drag brace. Additionally, the diameters of the bolt holes were larger than the maximum allowed as outlined in the maintenance manual. The right strut was installed on an exemplar airframe in order to determine if any play could be identified in the strut. The 100-hour landing gear inspection was performed and the strut exhibited play, which according to the manufacturer’s maintenance manual requires removal and additional inspections.
Probable cause
The fatigue failure of the landing gear strut and maintenance personnel’s failure to perform an adequate inspection of the landing gear.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA060
- Event ID
- 20091121X54759
- Case number
- WPR10LA060
- 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: 6b50f32df3c3ca9189c5faa8d7892cb6d34713898d616c2f9f5b3a5a79c47fbe; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:30:31.307Z.