Air Logistics Mbb BO-105 accident
Mbb BO-105 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Serenity Seaplane Base (95XS) to HIGH ISLAND 553, GM (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96FA265
- 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
- 4 · 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
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
- N2906T
- Operator
- Air Logistics
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Serenity Seaplane Base (95XS), TXTo HIGH ISLAND 553, GM (no airport)
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Rotor drive system, main gearbox/transmission › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The twin engine helicopter was en route to an oil platform located 90 miles south of Sabine Pass, Texas, in the Gulf of Mexico. The pilot called company dispatch and reported off Sabine at 0711 with 2.5 hours of fuel on board. The company's flight following radio log shows that the pilot made a normal position report at 0729 and reported that he was 67 miles from destination. The pilot transmitted another normal position report at 0744 and reported that he was 38 miles from destination. No other radio transmissions were received from the aircraft. According to the chief pilot, the altitude at which the helicopter would have been cruising at would most likely have been between 500 and 1,000 feet AGL. No abnormalities were discovered with the engines during detailed examinations. Tear down of the main transmission revealed that the sun gear had failed, thus resulting in the main rotor system not being driven. Structural deformations of the airframe revealed that the helicopter impacted the water vertically in a high rate of descent.
Probable cause
The failure of the sun gear within the main transmission resulting in the main rotor system not being driven.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96FA265
- Event ID
- 20001208X05956
- Case number
- FTW96FA265
- 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: 9ab55deb88e9da04bfcac39d72ee0f714c4b402ddeaf005e6f02a75028546f1d; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:37:51.101Z.