ERA10LA488 · Schulman Mosquito XEL
Schulman Mosquito XEL · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Cranland Airport (28M) to Cranland Airport (28M)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA488
- 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
Schulman Mosquito XEL
- Aircraft type
- Schulman MOSQUITO XEL
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cranland Airport (28M), Hanson, MATo Cranland Airport (28M), Hanson, MA
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The ultralight helicopter was observed flying low over a lake and then hovering over a swamp area with trees. When the helicopter was hovering just above the trees, the tail section yawed left and right, followed by the main rotor blades tipping left and right. The helicopter then entered a spin and nosed over and impacted the trees. A postaccident examination did not reveal any evidence of failures of the helicopter or its components that would have prevented normal operations prior to impact. The pilot purchased the helicopter as a kit and constructed it at the manufacturer's facility with their assistance. Before it was completely built, the pilot departed the facility with the helicopter and declined to receive 10 hours of flight instruction offered by the kit manufacturer. The pilot had his Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) medical certificate revoked 3 years prior to the accident and did not hold a helicopter rating. However, the pilot may have had experience in another type of helicopter and may have accumulated about 12 hours of flight time in the accident helicopter prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of control while hovering. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s limited experience operating the helicopter make and model.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA488
- Event ID
- 20100919X72723
- Case number
- ERA10LA488
- 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, coordinates. 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: e369d9127f73fd4e1199bb77d9fc07d2b64454628d57c815257a352c859f88fa; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:03:32.922Z.