Petroleum Helicopters Eurocopter AS-350-B2 accident
Eurocopter AS-350-B2 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From 193 to 177 · EUGENE IS. 177, GM
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW99FA094
- 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
- 2 · 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 AS-350-B2
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter AS-350
- 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
- N6100R
- Operator
- Petroleum Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 193To 177 · EUGENE IS. 177, GM
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Loss of control on ground/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Landing gear, skid assembly › Entangled
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that as soon as he lifted the helicopter off the platform, he 'felt that something wasn't normal.' He added that he was '2 feet off the deck and turning to the left at the same time.' The surviving passenger stated that it felt as if 'the rear end of the aircraft either got pushed or pulled down.' He added that the nose pitched up violently and then the helicopter bounced (from side-to-side) on the platform. The pilot realized that he did not have enough room to land, and pulled up on the collective in an attempt to get away from the platform. The helicopter then rolled inverted and descended into the water on the north side of the platform. Examination of the platform revealed that the hatch door located on the west end of the platform had a handle that was bent and deformed. On the bottom side of the deformed handle there was a rolled gouge of metal. Under the gouge there was a paint chip. The helicopter's left spring-steel extension had the paint scraped off the upper outboard corner along the length of the extension. Paint analysis and geometric evaluation of the handle and the extension revealed that the paint chip found on the handle and the paint on the spring-steel extension were similar, and that the deformation on the handle coincided with the placement of the extension under the handle.
Probable cause
the loss of control as a result of the spring-steel extension becoming entangled with the hatch door handle during takeoff. A contributing factor was the flat design of the spring-steel extension.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW99FA094
- Event ID
- 20001205X00317
- Case number
- FTW99FA094
- 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: bcb3424ebcd415424e91dc9c6b035c28932dadc7b3d283486d74f6ca32b750b8; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:19:16.665Z.