CHI95FA035 · Sikorsky S-76A
Sikorsky S-76A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather on approach
From H572 · BALTIC1 OIL RIG, LA to Our Lady of the Angels Hospital Heliport (81LA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI95FA035
- 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
- 1 · 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
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Sikorsky S-76A
- Aircraft type
- Sikorsky S-76
- 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
- N2620
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From H572 · BALTIC1 OIL RIG, LATo Our Lady of the Angels Hospital Heliport (81LA), LA
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- Approach · IFR final approach
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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
- Copilot/second pilot › Altitude, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The crew went visual at the termination of a Copter approach. Conditions were a dark night with 300-400 foot overcast and fog. The point where the crew went visual was over the water, 1 mile offshore. The only visual references available were several lights on land, approximately 4 miles ahead. The local altimeter was 30.02. The captain's altimeter was set at 30.05 and the copilot's was set at 30.12. These settings would result in the captain's altimeter indicating 30 feet high, and the copilot's altimeter indicating 100 feet higher than the actual altitude. The copilot flying transitioned from instruments to an outside visual scan, for a transition to the landing site. The non-flying captain was looking down while changing radios. Neither pilot was aware of a descent until the level impact with the water. The helicopter came to rest submerged, inverted, with all windows on the left side broken. The copilot escaped through his missing window. The captain was not able to open his door and became disoriented. He exhausted the air in his emergency air bottle during the 4 minutes it took him to egress. The passenger drowned.
Probable cause
the copilot's failure to maintain altitude and the pilot-in-command's inadequate supervision of the operation. Factors include the dark night and low ceiling, and the flightcrew's failure to set the proper altimeter setting.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI95FA035
- Event ID
- 20001206X02565
- Case number
- CHI95FA035
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1994-11-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8db0521d1a335a35b2b43d62f9a4bfdfa9e7c5e82b316972bab24be83b965cc7; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:57:06.696Z.