ERA11CA059 · Hiller-Rogerson Helicopter UH12E
Summit Helicopters Hiller-Rogerson Helicopter UH12E · Accident: settling with power/vortex ring state while maneuvering
From Madison, FL to Madison, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11CA059
- 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
Hiller-Rogerson Helicopter UH12E
- Aircraft type
- Hiller Rogerson UH12
- 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
- N4034Z
- Operator
- Summit Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Madison, FLTo Madison, FL
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- 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
- Settling with power/vortex ring state
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the helicopter pilot, he was completing north-south herbicide spray patterns with wind varying from east to south at 4 to 5 mph. As the pilot positioned the helicopter for the next northern track, after completing his turn, he began to feel it lose altitude. The pilot stated that he tried to regain control by pushing forward the cyclic and lowering the collective in an effort to get out of the settling with power. When ground contact was imminent, he raised the collective to cushion the impact. The helicopter touched down, spun, and rolled onto its left side. Postaccident examination by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed substantial damage to the tail boom. The pilot stated that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions with the helicopter.
Probable cause
The pilot's encounter with a settling with power condition while he was performing slow, low-level, out-of- ground-effect flight maneuvers.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11CA059
- Event ID
- 20101115X55905
- Case number
- ERA11CA059
- 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: ae7d57e058561e4a68d2c08467501cd8f22ae68d8a460cb05ed1dc25cc310389; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:33:48.163Z.