K & S Helicopters McDonnell Douglas Helicopter 369E accident
McDonnell Douglas Helicopter 369E · Accident: dynamic rollover during takeoff
From Kahuku, HI (private airstrip) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC24LA012
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 Helicopter 369E
- 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
- N545PH
- Operator
- K & S Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kahuku, HI (private airstrip)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 27 years (built 1997)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Dynamic rollover
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while attempting to takeoff from a landing zone (LZ) that was overgrown with tall vegetation, the right front skid got caught in a fence, which resulted in a dynamic roll over. The helicopter rolled to the right and forward down the ridge and came to rest on its right side. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, tail boom and main rotor transmission. The pilot stated that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to maintain directional control after a skid got caught on a fence while he was maneuvering the helicopter for takeoff, which resulted in a dynamic roll-over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC24LA012
- Event ID
- 20240206193753
- Case number
- ANC24LA012
- 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, 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: 439f0d03fbf4490d2467606e70cd3870dce609fbabec62e467ec8bf6473ab09e; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:29:22.463Z.