CEN25LA003 · Schweizer 269C
Optimal Lift Schweizer 269C · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during autorotation
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA003
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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
- 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
Schweizer 269C
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer 269
- 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
- N656RB
- Operator
- Optimal Lift
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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 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
- Autorotation
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On October 2, 2024, about 1840, mountain daylight time, a Schweizer 296C helicopter, N656RB, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Montrose, Colorado. The pilot and passenger sustained minor injuries. The helicopter was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. The pilot stated that during an autorotation demonstration, the helicopter had a complete loss of engine power. The pilot had set up the demonstration about 1,500 ft above ground level and about 60 knots indicated airspeed with hard packed gravel terrain chosen for their touchdown point. The pilot stated that the engine RPM went to zero as soon as he rolled off the throttle to start the autorotation. He attempted to restart the engine with no success, and conducted an autorotation to the predetermined touchdown area. During the ground run, the left skid collapsed, and the helicopter rolled onto its left side which resulted in substantial damage to the main rotor system, tail boom, and tail rotor system. The wreckage was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA003
- Event ID
- 20241003195253
- Case number
- CEN25LA003
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2024-10-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 692b35b418034b2a1271b48494949a5dd02533e9f291fa1a6d450ba8406d7a20; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:20:55.205Z.