EMS Air Services of New York Mbb BO-105CBS accident
Mbb BO-105CBS · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From JERSUSALEM, NY (no airport) to Rochester, NY (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97FA032
- 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
- 3 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Mbb BO-105CBS
- 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
- N90750
- Operator
- EMS Air Services of New York
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From JERSUSALEM, NY (no airport)To Rochester, NY (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 · climb to 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 › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot landed the helicopter in an open field for a medical evacuation. He had planned to fly to a hospital about 40 miles northwest. After takeoff, the pilot radioed the company dispatcher that he was airborne, and to standby for time and distance to the destination. The distance would be obtained from a GPS located on the rear of the helicopter's center console. About 2 minutes later, the helicopter crashed in a secluded wooded area on rising terrain about 1.1 miles northwest of the departure point. Witnesses reported that the cloud cover and the isolated area made a dark night with no discernable horizon. Winds were reported as strong and gusty from the south/southeast. The topography surrounding the area included rising terrain, with peaks at 2,700 feet msl. The helicopter had departed an airport with an elevation of 814 feet msl. The pick-up point was 1,540 feet msl, and the accident site was 1,740 feet msl. Cloud cover in the area was at 1,900 to 2,000 feet msl.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain altitude/clearance from the terrain. Factors relating to the accident were: the pilot's diverted attention to the GPS, darkness, low ceiling, rising terrain, and high wind condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97FA032
- Event ID
- 20001208X07172
- Case number
- IAD97FA032
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1996-12-13.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3e424526b1d19fffe75937dd698dfefaabd19657120fb63779dcf86b46e2428b; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:31:36.297Z.