FTW97FA014 · Mbb BO-105 CBS-4 BO-105 CBS
Mbb BO-105 CBS-4 BO-105 CBS · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From K7R5 to Lake Charles Regional Airport (LCH)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97FA014
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Mbb BO-105 CBS-4 BO-105 CBS
- 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
- N299EH
- Operator
- Era, Gulf Coast Division · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From K7R5To Lake Charles Regional Airport (LCH), Lake Charles, 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
- 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
- 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
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Cameron, LA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The twin-engine helicopter departed a field base during the early morning into the dark night to reposition the aircraft to a full service facility for maintenance. No radio/distress calls were received from the helicopter after the pilot called in his flight plan. The wreckage was found severely fragmented along a 300-foot long energy path located in coastal marshland approximately 4 nautical miles north of the field base. Detailed examination of the aircraft, engines, and drive components did not reveal pre-impact anomalies that would have contributed to the accident, and there was no evidence of an in-flight breakup or in-flight collision with an object. The pilot had over 11,200 hours of helicopter time, of which 316 were at night and 446 were under actual or simulated instrument conditions. The flight was conducted during the 11th and 12th hours of the pilot's 12-hour duty shift, which was his first night back from a two-week vacation during which he had been sleeping nights.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain clearance with terrain for undetermined reasons. Contributing factors were the dark night and pilot fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97FA014
- Event ID
- 20001208X06867
- Case number
- FTW97FA014
- 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: 0375964c60dfab512a4ed90e40171f1f7e55b1dd84163451f567e8b1afc37e4f; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:10:29.090Z.