CEN15LA396 · Burns Mini 500
Burns Mini 500 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) en route
From Butler Memorial Airport (BUM) to Butler Memorial Airport (BUM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA396
- 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
Burns Mini 500
- Aircraft type
- Burns MINI 500
- 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
- UNREG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Butler Memorial Airport (BUM), Butler, MOTo Butler Memorial Airport (BUM), Butler, MO
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2015)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 private pilot had just departed the airport in the unregistered, amateur-built helicopter. While in the traffic pattern, the helicopter shuddered and made a noise the pilot described as sounding like a tire blowing out on a car. He performed an autorotation to a soybean field and leveled the helicopter at 5 ft above the ground (2 ft above the crop), although he stated that he believed that the helicopter's tail rotor may have been in the crop, which caused instability. When the rotor speed bled off, the helicopter settled onto its right skid and rolled over. Postaccident examination did not reveal any preimpact anomalies, but a complete examination was not performed. Although the pilot believed that the one-way clutch, part of the power transmission system of the helicopter, had failed, which would have resulted in a loss of power to the rotor system, he had not disassembled the transmission to verify this. Additionally, the pilot's improper flare during the autorotation resulted in a premature loss of rotor speed, and the subsequent rollover.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to attain a proper landing flare following an autorotation for reasons that could not be determined based on available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA396
- Event ID
- 20150902X03440
- Case number
- CEN15LA396
- 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: 65f67d8d9f8fecb33adca1d03cafb66df7be9f182de0c92cd758da86b27ba1ea; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:44:25.362Z.