LAX98TA278 · Aerospatiale SA316B
US Dept of the Interior Aerospatiale SA316B · Accident: rotor failure/malfunction while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98TA278
- 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
- 0 · 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
Aerospatiale SA316B
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale SA316
- 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
- N605RA
- Operator
- U.S. Dept. of the Interior
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Rotor failure/malfunction
- 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
- External load cable/hook › Entangled
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter had a bambi bucket on a 100-foot-long line. The bucket became entangled in some trees and the line snapped and wrapped itself around the tail rotor. The tail rotor blades and gearbox separated from the aircraft and the helicopter spun to the ground and rolled down a steep slope. The pilot did not report any mechanical malfunction with the aircraft prior to the accident. Wire marks were found on the tail rotor blades and around the output shaft.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate in-flight clearance between the bucket and trees resulting in the entanglement/separation of the long line and subsequent impact with and separation of the tail rotor assembly. A factor was the trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98TA278
- Event ID
- 20001211X10910
- Case number
- LAX98TA278
- 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: 727dbd1fa67f63a360cdb257bba80f643dd7d65018434779b52e12625602191d; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:00:29.758Z.