ERA19TA213 · Continental Copters Inc TOMCAT MK6C
Continental Copters Inc TOMCAT MK6C · Accident while maneuvering
From Franklin, KY to Franklin, KY
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19TA213
- 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 MK6C
- Aircraft type
- Continental Copters TOMCAT MK6C
- 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
- N41830
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Franklin, KYTo Franklin, KY
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1973)
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter pilot of the aerial application flight departed from the rooftop helipad of a truck to spray a field. He reported that as the helicopter turned, descended, and leveled off, he realized that the main rotor rpm began to decay. The pilot increased throttle, lowered the collective, and applied aft cyclic to increase rotor rpm; however, the tailboom contacted the ground and the helicopter rolled inverted, which resulted in substantial damage. The pilot added that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions with the helicopter.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain main rotor rpm after takeoff, which resulted in a collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19TA213
- Event ID
- 20190708X44358
- Case number
- ERA19TA213
- 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: 22011ee830354a21c5e502665457f2c8248d64b775d1015dc38bcd16635928b3; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:23:12.359Z.