ERA13LA300 · Sikorsky 269C
Helicopter Flight Services Sikorsky 269C · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) on approach
From Flying W Airport (N14) to Flying W Airport (N14)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13LA300
- 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
Sikorsky 269C
- Aircraft type
- Sikorsky 269
- 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
- N2091E
- Operator
- Helicopter Flight Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flying W Airport (N14), Lumberton, NJTo Flying W Airport (N14), Lumberton, NJ
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 engine power (partial)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot initiated a practice autorotation about 951 feet above ground level (agl), rolled off the throttle to the idle detent, and maintained 60 knots during the descent until 50 feet agl, at which time, he flared the helicopter. At the end of the flare, when the helicopter was about 20 to 30 feet agl, the pilot lowered the nose to level the helicopter, began to increase the collective, and rolled on the throttle for a power recovery. The pilot reported that, subsequently, the engine sounded like it was "bogging down" and that the engine rpm was not increasing enough for the helicopter to continue to come to a hover. The helicopter continued to descend and contacted the runway hard, which resulted in substantial damage to the vertical firewall. A postaccident engine run revealed no evidence of a preimpact failure or malfunction that would have precluded normal operation. According to the pilot's flight manual, when performing practice autorotations, the pilot should lower the collective while maintaining the throttle setting to prevent the engine from "loading up or stalling" during recovery. Therefore, it is likely that the pilot rolling the throttle to the idle detent at the beginning of the maneuver, which was contrary to procedures, resulted in the engine hesitating when power was applied for the recovery.
Probable cause
The pilot's movement of the throttle to the idle detent at the beginning of a practice autorotation, which was contrary to procedures and resulted in the engine hesitating during the power recovery and a subsequent hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13LA300
- Event ID
- 20130624X94122
- Case number
- ERA13LA300
- 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: 615c4261b6bec4784a0fd7506398af73dd1599a5fe5bd5848510f2e5c8870438; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:59:32.021Z.