Hermann Hospital Life Flight Eurocopter BK 117 B-1 accident
Eurocopter BK 117 B-1 · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From an unrecorded airport to Mag Drop Airport (20TA)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99LA080
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Eurocopter BK 117 B-1
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter BK-117
- 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
- N220HH
- Operator
- Hermann Hospital Life Flight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Mag Drop Airport (20TA), Houston, TX
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Initial climb
- First occurrenceThe 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
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire, transmission
- 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
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter impacted power lines while departing from an automobile accident scene. The helicopter was part of a two aircraft team dispatched to the scene of the automobile accident. During the landing approach, the pilot noticed the power lines running parallel to the road; however, he did not consider them to be an unusual hazard at the time. After the passengers were loaded into the helicopter, the pilot took off, drifted toward the wires, and impacted the power lines. The pilot then landed the helicopter in an adjacent field. The pilot stated that at the time the helicopter impacted the wires 'the sun was shining directly into the aircraft' and that 'trash was blowing around.' Another helicopter was dispatched to the scene of the accident to transport the patients to the hospital.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance with the power lines. A factor was the sunglare reducing the pilot's visibility.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99LA080
- Event ID
- 20001205X00163
- Case number
- FTW99LA080
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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. 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: 357391e8b979e720870b707166e581a4e38d06b752f130514134c736d9cd31b7; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:59:20.550Z.