NTSB CAROL · Event
Event FTW96LA125
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
Failure of the unqualified helicopter pilot to maintain control of the helicopter. Factors relating to the accident were: his lack of total experience in helicopters and his improper decision to attempt to hover without appropriate training/endorsement for flight in the helicopter.
Factual narrative
On February 16, 1996, at 2000 central standard time, a Hughes 269A helicopter, N8897F, sustained substantial damage following a loss of control while hovering near Dallas, Texas. The student pilot was seriously injured. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed for the maintenance flight. According to the Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower at the Addison Airport, they were contacted by the student pilot who advised them that "he was going to perform a maintenance run up, but remain in the same location." According to witnesses, the pilot lost control as the helicopter as it came to a hover. The helicopter landed hard, rolled over and came to rest on its side. According to the pilot a new radio and transponder were installed in his newly purchased helicopter. The pilot stated that his intentions were to perform an operational check of the newly installed radios. The pilot's logbook was found at the accident site. The logbook revealed that the student pilot had accumulated a total of 88.6 flight hours in single engine airplanes, of which 0.6 hours were solo. On the enclosed NTSB form 6120.1/2 the pilot states that he had accumulated 2.5 hours in the accident aircraft. The owner of a newly purchased helicopter was a student pilot. He decided to make a maintenance run-up and to perform an operational check of the newly installed radios. The student stated that his intentions were to bring the helicopter into a hover, but remain in the same location. After lift-off, the student lost control of the helicopter. Subsequently, it touched down hard, rolled over, and came to rest on its side. According to his logbook, the student pilot/owner of the helicopter had accumulated a total of 88.6 hours in single engine airplanes, of which 0.6 hours were solo. He stated that he had accumulated 2.5 hours in the accident helicopter before the accident. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_1996_FTW96LA125.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
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Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (stall, loss of control, maintenance). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.
- Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons 2023 · Conference paper
The Value of Strong Partnerships to Build a Successful Aviation Maintenance Career Pathway Program for Transitioning Military Service Members
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- Semantic Scholar 2016 · Article (Interacción)
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- Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons 2026 · Journal article (IJAAA)
From Reactive to Predictive: A hybrid Trust-Mediated Adoption Framework for Data-Driven Maintenance in Distributed-Authority Aviation Environments
Modern aviation maintenance operates within increasingly data-intensive technological environments, yet the operational integration of predictive maintenance into routine decision-making remains incon…
- NASA NTRS 2026 · Conference Paper
Computational Analysis of Steady State Aerodynamics of Transonic Truss-Braced Wing Configuration in Deep Stall
This study presents a computational investigation of steady state aerodynamics of the Subsonic Ultra-Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR) Transonic Truss-Braced Wing (TTBW) configuration over a wide range …
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