FTW98FA256 · Eurocopter AS350BA
Eurocopter AS350BA · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From South Texas Emergency Care Foundation Inc Heliport (78TS) to La Gloria, TX (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA256
- 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
- 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
Eurocopter AS350BA
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter AS350
- 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
- N911VA
- Operator
- Edward L. Behne · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From South Texas Emergency Care Foundation Inc Heliport (78TS), Harlingen, TXTo La Gloria, TX (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 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 encounter with weather
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 2,905-hour instrument rated commercial helicopter pilot encountered an area of limited visibility during a dark night flight over an unlit, very sparsely populated, rural area while en route to evacuate a truck driver injured in a highway accident. The helicopter crashed 19 miles west of the truck accident site, indicating that the pilot failed to recognize his intended destination and flew past it. The helicopter impacted trees and terrain in a left turn in a 85 to 95 degrees nose down attitude. The pilot had accumulated a total of 4 hours of actual and 45 hours of simulated instrument flight time, none of it within the 90 days preceding the accident. The pilot was reported to have been concerned about night flights in the area due to the lack of lights on the ground to maintain visual reference. Another helicopter pilot stated that 'at night the area west of the highway is a big black hole.' No discrepancies were found that could have prevented normal flight operations. The pilot who flew the helicopter prior to the accident flight stated that 'the aircraft flew well and responded normally.' The visibility had been severely restricted by thick smoke from fires in Mexico. No distress calls were received from the helicopter. There were no reported eyewitnesses to the accident.
Probable cause
the pilot's continued flight into adverse weather conditions resulting in a loss of control due to spatial disorientation. Contributing factors were the dark night illumination, the lack of visual cues, the pilot's lack of total instrument time, and the pressure induced by the medical emergency to complete the medical evacuation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA256
- Event ID
- 20001211X10290
- Case number
- FTW98FA256
- 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: 146cedf6ae93d238cbef9ac980b3cca175ab4f3b2a694b48e4ac4cbde5df398f; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:33:33.093Z.