WPR11LA167 · Rotorway A600 Talon
Rotorway International Rotorway A600 Talon · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Stellar Airpark (P19) to Stellar Airpark (P19)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA167
- 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
Rotorway A600 Talon
- Aircraft type
- Rotorway A600
- 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
- N602RW
- Operator
- Rotorway International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stellar Airpark (P19), Chandler, AZTo Stellar Airpark (P19), Chandler, AZ
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/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 propeller/rotor
- Organizational issues › Development
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and a helicopter-rated pilot were conducting the flight for the purpose of transitioning the pilot to the piston-engine experimental helicopter. About 30 minutes into the flight, while flying straight and level, the pilots felt a jolt followed by loud noise and vibration. The flight instructor reduced power and began looking for a place to land. Erratic engine tachometer indications and additional power reduction then prompted the flight instructor to enter an autorotation for a forced landing. The helicopter had some forward velocity at touchdown on the firm, smooth ground. The skids dug in and the helicopter rolled over. Both pilots were uninjured.
The helicopter used a system of pulleys and sprockets to enable the engine to drive the main rotor at the desired rotational speed. The accident helicopter incorporated a design change for the main drive pulley attachment to the engine flywheel. The original design used three 3/8-inch diameter socket-head bolts to attach the pulley to the flywheel and one other drive component; the revised design used four 1/4-inch diameter cross-slot (Phillips) screws to attach the pulley only to the flywheel. Postaccident examination of the components revealed that the four attach screws had failed due to fatigue. Laboratory examination of other screws from the same manufacturing lot indicated that the screws were in compliance with their design specifications. The failed screws had about 20 hours in service. The torque that could be applied to the cross-slot screws was limited by the slippage of the screwdriver in the screw head, which in turn limited the preload on the screws and the induced friction in the pulley-to-flywheel joint. Those conditions contributed to the cyclic loading of the fasteners, which then resulted in their fatigue failure. Subsequent to the accident, the manufacturer reverted to its original flywheel-pulley attach method and replaced the newer design pulley assemblies with the original configuration.
Probable cause
A design modification that changed the fasteners and components used to attach the main rotor drive pulley to the engine, which resulted in fatigue failure of those fasteners and a complete loss of power to the main rotor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA167
- Event ID
- 20110316X73905
- Case number
- WPR11LA167
- 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: 0ec7dd7a4c90210c85c0a52c37a15345da81bcd03f980d22bd6f1bb41c227c05; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:55:03.373Z.