WPR24LA028 · MD Helicopters Inc 369FF
MD Helicopters Inc 369FF · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA028
- 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
MD Helicopters Inc 369FF
- Aircraft type
- MD Helicopters 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
- N369FF
- Operator
- MD Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2009)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a proficiency flight, the pilot was demonstrating an autorotation, and the nonflying pilot was following on the flight controls. While holding the flare to land, an excessive amount of aft cyclic was abruptly applied, and the tailskid and tail rotor contacted the ground. The pilot leveled the helicopter and completed the autorotation. The helicopter spun about 90° to the right before it came to a stop. The tail rotor assembly, tail boom, horizontal and vertical stabilizers, and tail rotor drive shaft couplings sustained substantial damage. The operator reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain a proper autorotation profile during deceleration that resulted in the tail rotor assembly impacting the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA028
- Event ID
- 20231106193356
- Case number
- WPR24LA028
- 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, cause areas. 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: 2c086e67093d758c7c252e93cb1c9805dc786531b4e4271a18625f898617068e; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:16:41.326Z.