Yates W/Lazar M SAFARI HELICOPTER N555BB

Summary

On 13 September 2009 at about 19:30 local time, a Yates W/Lazar M SAFARI HELICOPTER registered N555BB was involved in an accident near Cedar Park, Texas, United States. One person was on board and one had minor injuries. The aircraft was substantially damaged. The NTSB has published a probable cause for this accident; it is quoted in full below.

Date

13 September 2009 at 19:30

Classification

Accident

Location

Cedar Park, Texas, United States

Nearest airport

Breakaway Park Airport (40XS)

Coordinates

30.5208, -97.7764

Aircraft

Yates W/Lazar M SAFARI HELICOPTER

Registration

N555BB

Category

Helicopter

Engines

1

Operator

Not recorded

Operating rule

Part 91: General Aviation

Purpose of flight

Personal

Phase of flight

Not recorded

Route

Cedar Park → Cedar Park

Aircraft damage

Substantial

Weather

VMC

Light

Day

NTSB number

CEN09CA584

1 person had minor injuries.

An in-flight separation of the tail rotor blades and the tail rotor gearbox for undetermined reasons.

Quoted verbatim from the NTSB record. This site does not paraphrase or interpret it.

Read the full NTSB narrative

The helicopter was approximately 400 feet above the ground on a normal straight-in landing to a paved runway. At an airspeed of 45 miles per hour the pilot heard a snap and the helicopter began to spin. The pilot entered an autorotation and said he was concentrating on just “trying to keep the helicopter as flat as possible”. The helicopter struck the trees in a nose-down attitude. There was no fuel spill and no postcrash fire. The helicopter was substantially damaged and the pilot, who was the only occupant, sustained minor injuries. The Texas State Trooper who responded said that the tail rotor gearbox was missing from the area of the main wreckage. By the next day residents in the area had found a single tail rotor blade and, several hundred feet away, they found the other tail rotor blade still attached to the tail rotor hub and tail rotor gearbox. Photographs of the separated tail rotor blade show that the skin had ripped away from all three blade grip bolt holes. A postcrash examination of the helicopter failed to reveal why the tail rotor blades and gearbox separated from the aircraft.

Quoted verbatim from the NTSB record.