WPR10LA464 · Hughes OH-6A
Jims Air Repair Hughes OH-6A · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) en route
From Majuro, PO to Majuro, PO
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10LA464
- 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
Hughes OH-6A
- Aircraft type
- Hughes OH-6
- 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
- N74LB
- Operator
- Jims Air Repair
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Majuro, POTo Majuro, PO
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
According to a representative from the operator, the pilot and spotter were conducting fish-spotting duties, and the helicopter was in a cruise flight about 600 feet above the water when the pilot felt a vibration through the tail rotor pedals. The pilot descended to about 15 feet above the water; the helicopter yawed right, contacted the water, and rolled over. The pilot and spotter exited the helicopter and were later rescued by a fishing vessel; however, the spotter died the following day. The helicopter’s tail boom and tail rotor assembly were not located and presumably sank. Sections of the fuselage and main rotor assembly were recovered but were disposed of before investigative personnel could examine them.
Probable cause
A loss of helicopter control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10LA464
- Event ID
- 20100921X14612
- Case number
- WPR10LA464
- 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: 1fb9704d2ae32eb7161fca85ead9f59a842c6b931ca259c4fcc3178de11b19a5; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:03:46.702Z.