WPR13LA099 · Goetz HELICYCLE
Goetz HELICYCLE · Accident: hard landing during autorotation
From Chandler Municipal Airport (CHD) to Falcon Field (FFZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA099
- 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
Goetz HELICYCLE
- Aircraft type
- Goetz HELICYCLE
- 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
- N143PG
- Operator
- Goetz Joe
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chandler Municipal Airport (CHD), Chandler, AZTo Falcon Field (FFZ), Mesa, 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
- Autorotation
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while in cruise flight the helicycle's engine lost partial power. Unable to maintain altitude he maneuvered to find a safe landing area, and autorotated onto a residential street. A witness reported that before the helicycle landed, it was oscillating and sounded as if the engine was cutting in and out. Postaccident examination of the helicycle revealed that the "B" wire, which runs between the electronic speed controller unit and fuel controller actuator motor, separated from the connection during cruise flight. The pilot reported that if the fuel controller actuator motor loses power, the engine would automatically go to a minimum fuel stop position and flight idle. The pilot further reported that there were no parts failures, but that he had installed the "B" wire without an additional strain relief at the connector, which allowed the wire to disconnect from the system during normal operations. The pilot reported that the accident can be prevented by installing a second parallel wire between the fuel controller actuator motor and the electronic speed controller unit.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly install and secure the wire connecting the electronic speed controller unit to the fuel controller actuator motor, which resulted in the wire’s disconnection in flight and the resultant partial loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA099
- Event ID
- 20130122X90030
- Case number
- WPR13LA099
- 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: 0ee87046802838e3c57ce87358e35cba81027d7f5f14efeec2df69d596afdba4; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:47:32.671Z.