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Atlas / NTSB / MIA90LA076

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event MIA90LA076

1990-03-02 VERO BEACH, Florida, United States Airport · VRB None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

THE FAILURE OF THE PILOT IN COMMAND/INSTRUCTOR PILOT TO MAINTAIN ADEQUATE ROTOR RPM AFTER LANDING FROM A TOUCHDOWN AUTOROTATION. A FACTOR RELATED TO THE ACCIDENT WAS THE GUSTY WIND CONDITION.

Factual narrative

THE INSTRUCTOR PILOT AND THE RATED HELICOPTER PILOT WERE PRACTICING TOUCHDOWN AUTOROTATIONS. AFTER A LANDING AND GROUND SLIDE, THEY BOTH NOTED VIBRATIONS, THEN SHUT DOWN THE ENGINE AND EXITED THE HELICOPTER. THE MAIN ROTOR BLADES HAD STRUCK THE TAILBOOM AND SEVERED THE TAIL ROTOR DRIVESHAFT. THE WIND AT 1450 CST WAS FROM 140 DEG AT 16 GUSTING 22 KTS. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1990_MIA90LA076.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (icing). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗