WPR12LA341 · Fairchild Hiller FH-1100
Fairchild Hiller FH-1100 · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure en route
From Cody, WY to Cody, WY
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA341
- 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
Fairchild Hiller FH-1100
- Aircraft type
- Fairchild Hiller FH-1100
- 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
- N5038F
- Operator
- Harrison Timothy Bruce
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cody, WYTo Cody, WY
- Aircraft age
- About 43 years (built 1969)
- 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
- Flight control system 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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while in cruise flight, the rear of the helicopter suddenly began to vibrate. He performed an autorotation to a field, and the helicopter landed hard. The tailboom and main transmission mounts were substantially damaged. The pilot reported that a tail rotor driveshaft coupling had split in half, which resulted in a loss of tail rotor drive. Postaccident examination of the tail rotor driveshaft coupling revealed that the coupling failure was initiated by fatigue cracking. A complete history of the part was not available; therefore, the total time in service of the part could not be determined.
Probable cause
The failure of a tail rotor driveshaft coupling due to fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA341
- Event ID
- 20120802X80851
- Case number
- WPR12LA341
- 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: 0c141443179864632c4de37e506d4c64ec31251817d4a407bc8745c41a010607; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:13:10.807Z.