CHI97LA140 · Aerospatiale AS-365-N2
Conseco Aerospatiale AS-365-N2 · Accident: propeller/rotor contact to person while standing
From Carmel, IN to Indianapolis International Airport (IND)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA140
- 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
- 1
- 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
Aerospatiale AS-365-N2
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale AS-365
- 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
- N653CN
- Operator
- Conseco
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carmel, INTo Indianapolis International Airport (IND)
- 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
- Standing · engine(s) not operating
- 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
- Propeller/rotor contact to person
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Passenger › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that he was delivering the passenger and his associate to their company's corporate ramp. 'I landed, taxied in, shut down the engines, and had applied the rotor brake. My passengers were deplaning from the right side of the helicopter with the help of line personnel.' The passenger 'walked forward of the helicopter and turned left into the tip path plane of the rotor system. The passenger was struck in the left temple by a main rotor blade.' The condition of the ramp was good. The static flex clearance of the helicopter blade was determined to decrease at increased wind velocities. The surface winds at 0756 est were reported as 040 at 14 gusting to 21 knots.
Probable cause
inadequate visual clearance by the passenger resulting in his being struck with the rotor blade. A factor relating to this accident was the gusting winds.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA140
- Event ID
- 20001208X07879
- Case number
- CHI97LA140
- 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, damage. 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: 8c787ce15aeb42b6f5e7d56cf596ab48378cd61c2e0b9f68c690e11f7730cbac; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:57:25.110Z.