CEN13LA537 · Continental Copters INC. TOMCAT MK5A
Scotts Helicopter Services Continental Copters INC. TOMCAT MK5A · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Arlington, MN to Arlington, MN
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA537
- 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
Continental Copters INC. TOMCAT MK5A
- Aircraft type
- Continental Copters TOMCAT MK5A
- 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
- N9005T
- Operator
- Scotts Helicopter Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arlington, MNTo Arlington, MN
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After taking off, the pilot applied pesticides to a field and proceeded to the next field located about 3 miles away. While en route, the pilot wanted to call his truck driver over the two-way radio. However, the radio connection to his helmet was unplugged, so he reached to plug it in with his right hand while his left hand transferred from the collective to the cyclic. Immediately after he plugged in the radio connection to his helmet, the collective slammed into the full-down position. The pilot then quickly grabbed the collective and raised it up. He noticed that the helicopter was losing altitude, that the main rotor rpm was decreasing, and that the engine rpm and main rotor rpm needles were split. He twisted the throttle control back and forth with no effect and then attempted to autorotate. The helicopter touched down hard, which resulted in substantial damage to the tailboom. Examination of the helicopter did not reveal any mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Also, a review of the maintenance logbooks for the helicopter did not show any entries regarding malfunctions with the collective control during previous flights, and the helicopter operated normally during the first flight of the day.
The pilot stated that he could have chosen to not unplug his helmet and keep his hand on the collective control at all times, which would have prevented the collective from slamming down while he was connecting his radio cables to his helmet. This model helicopter does not have a friction control mechanism on the collective control, and, if it is not held in place by the pilot, it can move up or down during flight. It is likely that, when the pilot removed his hand from the collective control and was distracted with plugging in his helmet radio connection, the collective moved to the full-down position and that he did not have enough altitude to recover the helicopter.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain control of the helicopter while maneuvering when he removed his hand from the collective control while plugging in his radio connection to his helmet, which resulted in the collective moving to the full-down position.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA537
- Event ID
- 20130909X44026
- Case number
- CEN13LA537
- 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, coordinates. 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: fe82279ceb7580cc255ad2c502a11c28f9d13f85b6b8ed20d8a9f8a0418045fb; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:48:17.693Z.