SEA96FA187 · Garlick UH-1H
Garlick UH-1H · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From 4TH OF JUL PASS, ID to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96FA187
- 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
- General aviation
- 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
Garlick UH-1H
- Aircraft type
- Garlick UH-1
- 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
- N97NW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 4TH OF JUL PASS, IDTo not recorded
- 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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 · hover
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Vertical stabilizer › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The aircraft, originally manufactured by Bell as a military helicopter, had received civil type certification under a different manufacturer. While conducting external load logging operations, the helicopter's vertical fin and tail rotor separated from the tail boom and the helicopter subsequently crashed. Postaccident investigation revealed that the left side of the forward vertical fin spar had a fatigue fracture originating at the first rivet hole above the intersection of the tail boom and the vertical fin. Between March and November 1996, two other similar helicopters (a Bell 205A-1 and a Garlick TH-1L) also crashed during external load operations after their vertical fins separated due to fatigue at the same location on the spar. An existing airworthiness directive (AD) on the Bell 205A-1, AD 71-21-02, contained procedures for checking the fracture area on these aircraft for cracks, but did not apply to any of the aircraft as the 205A-1 which crashed had modifications which exempted it from the AD, and the UH-1H and TH-1L were type-certificated as different make and model aircraft.
Probable cause
Fatigue fracture of the left forward vertical stabilizer spar, resulting in loss of the vertical stabilizer and tail rotor and subsequent loss of control. A factor was insufficient applicability (by make and model) of an existing FAA airworthiness directive (AD 71-21-02) which mandated repetitive crack inspections in the area of the fracture.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96FA187
- Event ID
- 20001208X06615
- Case number
- SEA96FA187
- 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: 8e6b11f8aa47eb7d03f1542f92a7eedd641037ca2d82af3d8ff3fba681a160d3; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:34:22.761Z.