ERA Helicopters Mbb BO-105 accident
Mbb BO-105 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From MAIN PASS 265, GM to MOBILE BAY 990, GM
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96FA136
- 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
- Unknown
Mbb BO-105
- Aircraft type
- MBB BO-105
- 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
- N126EH
- Operator
- Era Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From MAIN PASS 265, GMTo MOBILE BAY 990, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 terrain/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
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter departed from an offshore platform at Main Pass (MP) 265, in the Gulf of Mexico, en route to another platform at Mobile Bay (MB) 990, 44 miles to the northwest. The helicopter failed to arrive at its planned destination and the aircraft was reported missing at 0930. A search was initiated that continued for 6 days without success. The aircraft was found 18 days later when a shrimp boat entangled the wreckage in its shrimp net, six miles southwest of the destination. Weather at the departure point was reported by an observer to be clear with fog 3 to 4 miles west of the platform. Weather at the destination was reported to be intermittently obscured by fog. Flight control continuity was confirmed and showed no evidence of pre-existing problems. Both engines were examined by NTSB at the manufacturer's facility. No premishap discrepancies were observed. Deformation signatures throughout the structure and dynamic components of the helicopter showed evidence that the aircraft impacted the water with a high rate of airspeed, near level pitch attitude, and slightly right skid down.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the ocean for unknown reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96FA136
- Event ID
- 20001208X05241
- Case number
- FTW96FA136
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 9c8869e6ebe54b4b7ae1d85758ddcfc016bad0835e9c904a3258bb59c85c7daa; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:39:06.537Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N126EH; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.