WPR13LA266 · Eurocopter EC 130 B4
Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters Eurocopter EC 130 B4 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure during autorotation
From Valle Airport (40G) to Valle Airport (40G)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA266
- 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
Eurocopter EC 130 B4
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter EC-130
- 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
- N130PH
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Valle Airport (40G), Grand Canyon, AZTo Valle Airport (40G), Grand Canyon, 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was for the flight instructor to train a newly hired pilot in the company's normal operating procedures. After performing numerous autorotation maneuvers, the flight instructor rolled the throttle twist grip to the "idle positon" to conduct a simulated engine failure and autorotation, which he intended to terminate with a power recovery. After configuring the helicopter for an appropriate airspeed and while descending through 200 ft above ground level, he attempted to roll the twist grip from the "idle" to the "flight" position to increase engine power; however, he was not able to roll the twist grip at all. The flight instructor continued the autorotation to landing, and the helicopter touched down on soft terrain. A skid then got caught in the soft terrain, which resulted in the nose-down movement of the helicopter and the main rotor blades severing the tailboom. Postaccident examinations of the collective system revealed some anomalies; however, none of the anomalies would have resulted in the loss of throttle control movement.
If the landing had been made on a hard surface, it is unlikely that the skid would have gotten caught. Following the accident, the operator changed its procedures to require that the manipulation of the throttle twist grip only be done over a hard landing surface and at an airport.
Probable cause
A loss of throttle control movement during a practice autorotation that was planned to terminate with a power recovery for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Contributing to the accident was the soft terrain, which resulted in the skid getting caught, the nose-down movement of the helicopter, and subsequent main rotor contact with the tailboom.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA266
- Event ID
- 20130610X71727
- Case number
- WPR13LA266
- 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: 2c468c688535365c721a368f0604931c939deec89b3e38764e788a170aada7d7; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:48:57.663Z.