CEN13FA205 · Hughes OH-6A
Hughes OH-6A · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Caddo, TX to Caddo, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13FA205
- 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
- N910WC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Caddo, TXTo Caddo, TX
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter approached an open field, adjacent to a stock pond, where it had landed earlier in the day. The pilot stated that he looked for smoke or dust to establish the velocity and direction of the wind before landing, but that he did not observe any. As the pilot established a hover about 3 to 4 feet above the ground, he turned the helicopter east-southeast. Subsequently, the helicopter started to spin, and the pilot was unable to regain control. He stated that he did not get the left pedal in soon enough and/or hard enough. The pilot stated that the helicopter impacted the stock pond on the passenger side and immediately sank. An examination of the helicopter and its systems revealed no malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operations. The pilot was able to egress from the helicopter; however, the passenger was not. The passenger sustained a head injury during the impact sequence. It is possible that he was unconscious and, therefore, unable to get out of the helicopter.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the helicopter during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13FA205
- Event ID
- 20130326X72345
- Case number
- CEN13FA205
- 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: 72305f0fd40112ffb15e68574d241b35b28f2e979b6ee0bd04f3a7f2f76d8c26; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:54:42.666Z.