Liberty Helicopter Eurocopter AS350D accident
Eurocopter AS350D · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From East 34th Street Heliport (6N5) to Keansburg, NJ
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC95LA099
- 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 AS350D
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter AS350
- 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
- N900PH
- Operator
- Liberty Helicopter
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From East 34th Street Heliport (6N5), New York City, NYTo Keansburg, NJ
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Fuel starvation
- 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
- Engine assembly, bearing › Fatigue
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Sea Bright, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
At 1000 feet mean sea level, the helicopter's engine lost total power. The pilot entered autorotation, and deployed the floats in preparation for a water landing. During the flare, the tailrotor entered the water and separated from the tailboom. An engine teardown revealed that the inner race of the position 19 bearing, which supported the high speed power gearshaft, failed due to fatigue. Subsequently, the #1 and #2 (accessory) gears disengaged. These gears provided drive to the gas generator accessories, which included the fuel pump/control assemblies. With the gears disengaged, there was no drive to the fuel pump, rendering it incapable of delivering fuel to the fuel control.
Probable cause
Failure of the position 19 engine bearing, which resulted in shifting of the accessory gear drive, disengagement of the fuel pump, fuel starvation, and loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC95LA099
- Event ID
- 20001207X03528
- Case number
- NYC95LA099
- 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: f0af6c733472899047e097f5776408b1bae9b3bf972ee65984a07fc2d34dc544; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:01:10.654Z.