Ohana Helicopter Tours Eurocopter AS-350-BA accident
Eurocopter AS-350-BA · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Lihue Airport (LIH) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98FA211
- 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
- 6 · 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
Eurocopter AS-350-BA
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter AS-350
- 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
- N594BK
- Operator
- Ohana Helicopter Tours
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lihue Airport (LIH), Lihue, HITo 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 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 · 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › Remedial action, continued
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While operating under visual flight rules on an on-demand for hire aerial sight seeing tour, the helicopter encountered instrument meteorological conditions and impacted the 80-degree upsloping face of a mountain, 200 feet below its ridge crest. The tour was to circumnavigate a mountainous area on the island, with a visit to an extinct volcanic crater in a mountain valley. Three helicopters departed on the tour, with about 2 minutes between each departure. The pilot, who was employed by the operator 2.5-months earlier, was in trail behind the company's most experienced (chief) pilot, and second most experienced pilot. None had received a weather briefing from an FAA approved source as required in the company operations specifications. Throughout the flight they were in radio contact with each other. The two lead pilots were a few minutes ahead of the accident pilot as he approached an area of the valley near the crater where inclement weather existed. The second pilot ahead of the accident helicopter said that when he exited the crater near the accident site, he encountered heavy rain showers and lowering ceilings and visibilities. Although the accident pilot attempted to follow the company pilots ahead of him, he did not observe the valley entrance to the Waialeale crater viewpoint and flew past it. As the flight progressed, the pilot encountered lowering ceilings, heavy intensity rain showers, and reduced flight visibility. The pilot became disoriented, misjudged his location, and while cruising toward what he believed was the prescribed crater entranceway inadvertently entered instrument meteorological conditions. Just before the collision, the pilot transmitted to the pilots ahead of him that the weather was getting worse and that he could not see. The second pilot then provided a suggested heading that would take the accident pilot away from the mountainous terrain. The helicopter impacted the mountain on a heading nearly opposite of the one suggested. The helicopter was subsequently recovered and examined. No evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunction was noted. Between 30 and 45 minutes after the accident, one of the operator's tour pilots reported receiving the signal of an emergency locator transmitter (ELT). This pilot proceeded to pass by the general accident site area but was unable to observe the crashed helicopter due to the low level of clouds.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to continue VFR flight into deteriorating weather conditions consisting of lowering ceilings and visibility in mountainous terrain, which resulted in the inadvertent entry into instrument meteorological conditions and a collision with a mountain side. A factor in the accident was the failure of the chief pilot, who had directly observed the deteriorating weather conditions, to direct the following pilots to avoid the area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98FA211
- Event ID
- 20001211X10342
- Case number
- LAX98FA211
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: add0a40fd571661a2f98882a053eb5b88a99ca3a841fd85237db30e52c53dea6; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:22:49.197Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N594BK; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.