WPR18LA152 · McDonnell Douglas Heli Co 369FF
Rogers Helicopters McDonnell Douglas Heli Co 369FF · Accident while maneuvering
From Kingman Airport (IGM) to Wikieup, AZ
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA152
- 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
McDonnell Douglas Heli Co 369FF
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas 369
- 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
- N975BW
- Operator
- Rogers Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kingman Airport (IGM), Kingman, AZTo Wikieup, AZ
- Aircraft age
- About 24 years (built 1994)
- 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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 pilot was performing external load operations in the helicopter when he felt a vibration during a left descending turn. The pilot increased the collective to arrest the rate of descent, but the vibration became more prominent. He subsequently performed a forced landing, during which the helicopter impacted the ground and a main rotor blade contacted and severed the tailboom. The pilot did not report any malfunctions with the engine nor any abnormal increase or decrease in main rotor rpm. Postaccident examination revealed a fractured drive link and a fractured strap pack assembly. Examination of the fractured surfaces revealed signatures consistent with tensile overstress, most likely from the blade contacting the left inlet fairing after the helicopter impacted the ground. There was no other evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation, and the reason for the vibration could not be determined based on the available information.
Probable cause
A vibration of the helicopter for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information, which resulted in a forced landing and the main rotor contacting the tailboom.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA152
- Event ID
- 20180529X63351
- Case number
- WPR18LA152
- 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: c48c244c770314f6053f143547963212a34a9dcdd3372823f9ac9a4ccccc75cf; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:18:31.779Z.