WPR15LA249 · Schweizer 269C - UNDESIGNAT
Schweizer 269C - UNDESIGNAT · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure on approach
From Falcon Field (FFZ) to Falcon Field (FFZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA249
- 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
Schweizer 269C - UNDESIGNAT
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer 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
- N315TV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Falcon Field (FFZ), Mesa, AZTo Falcon Field (FFZ), Mesa, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 1998)
- 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
- 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
- Flight control system 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that, after returning from a noneventful personal flight and during the approach for landing, he noticed erratic cyclic control movements. He attempted an emergency landing, but the cyclic continued to move erratically counter-clockwise, and the helicopter subsequently landed hard.
Postaccident examination of the helicopter revealed that a main rotor damper had disbonded, which would have resulted in the degradation of its damping capability and excessive main rotor vibrations and oscillations. This would have caused substantial damage in the main rotor mast supporting structure and aft cabin bulkhead before the landing and the erratic cyclic control movements reported by the pilot. Further examination of the helicopter and engine did not reveal any additional evidence of a mechanical malfunction or failure that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The disbondment of a main rotor damper, which resulted in the degradation of its damping action and led to excessive main rotor vibrations and oscillations that caused substantial damage to the helicopter in flight and led to a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA249
- Event ID
- 20150824X75351
- Case number
- WPR15LA249
- 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: b8ffb4add60818a36db3f7b83f59232733c65905d785fe5ac103f21cdb7807e5; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:42:39.834Z.