SEA97FA196 · Southern Aero UH-1B
Southern Aero UH-1B · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From WA60 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA97FA196
- 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
- Unknown
Southern Aero UH-1B
- Aircraft type
- Southern Aero 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
- N896W
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From WA60To 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
- Rotor drive system, main rotor mast(drive shaft) › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While performing external load logging operations, the helicopter's main rotor separated from the helicopter and the helicopter crashed. Metallurgical examination of the main rotor mast revealed a fatigue fracture in the upper spirolox groove in the damper support splines. Based on the mast's historical service record, the fractured mast, a Bell part number 204-011-450-001 mast assembly with a part number '204-040-466-9' mast tube (not a valid part number according to Bell), had 4,006.7 hours at the time of the mast separation. An FAA airworthiness directive (AD), AD 97-14-12, applicable to Bell 204B, 205A, 205A-1, 205B, and 212 civil helicopters but not to surplus military UH-1 helicopters, limited the life of part number 204-011-450-001 masts to 6,000 flight hours or a retirement index number (RIN) of 300,000 (the fractured mast had a RIN of 200,335, computed according to the method specified by that AD.) The most recent main rotor mast AD directly applicable to the accident helicopter, AD 89-17-03, limited mast life to 15,000 hours and contained no requirement to establish or track RIN. The 'thin-walled' Bell part number 204-040-366-9 mast tubes installed in part number 204-011-450-001 masts were ordered removed from U.S. Army UH-1 helicopters by a 1984 U.S. Army emergency safety-of-flight message.
Probable cause
A fatigue fracture in the main rotor mast, which resulted in an in flight separation of the main rotor from the helicopter. Contributing to the accident was insufficient Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness standards and requirements for the aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA97FA196
- Event ID
- 20001208X08741
- Case number
- SEA97FA196
- 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: e6ac7d82c720b1033d2a97be57860f51aef45f3e5b581b17acbd25ae2946b45e; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:50:45.601Z.