ERA26LA094 · Sled Thomas HELICYCLE
Sled Thomas HELICYCLE · Accident: loss of tail rotor effectiveness during landing
From Dauphin Island, AL to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA26LA094
- 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
- 0
- 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
Sled Thomas HELICYCLE
- Aircraft type
- Sled Thomas HELICYCLE
- 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
- N3722T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dauphin Island, ALTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 23 years (built 2003)
- 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
- Loss of tail rotor effectiveness
- 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 pilot reported that during the approach to land at an off-airport location, the helicopter entered an uncommanded right rotation. He attributed the loss of control to unfavorable winds and described the event as consistent with a loss of tail rotor effectiveness. He was unable to regain control, and the helicopter continued to descend in a spiraling right spin before it impacted the ground and rolled over. As a result, the helicopter sustained substantial damage to the fuselage. The pilot 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 yaw control during a crosswind approach, which resulted in a loss of tail rotor effectiveness, an uncommanded spin, hard landing, and subsequent rollover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA26LA094
- Event ID
- 20260115202302
- Case number
- ERA26LA094
- 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: 04bfc7105098fc3c8ae80eb91ad29691ec0083bfae0c0711114548b27bc357a8; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:40:34.885Z.