Era Aviation Bell 412 incident
Bell 412 · Incident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From WEST. CARRIBEAN, GM (no airport) to Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW91IA143
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Bell 412
- Aircraft type
- Bell 412
- 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
- N177EH
- Operator
- Era Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From WEST. CARRIBEAN, GM (no airport)To Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY), New Orleans, LA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- None
Cause areas
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Rotor drive system, tail rotor drive shaft › Failure, total
- Rotorcraft flight control, tail rotor control › Loss, total
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
DURING TAKEOFF FROM A MOVING VESSEL, THE PILOT LOST DIRECTIONAL CONTROL. HE ELECTED TO CONTINUE TO FLY IN AN EFFORT TO REACH AN OFFSHORE PLATFORM. AS DIRECTION CONTROL BECAME MORE UNSTABLE, THE CAPTAIN ORDERED THE FIRST OFFICER TO MAKE A WATER LANDING. FLOATS WERE INFLATED AND THE LANDING WAS MADE WITHOUT INCIDENT. ALL 15 ON BOARD WERE RECOVERED WITHOUT INCIDENT. EXAMINATION REVEALED THAT THE TAIL ROTOR DRIVE SHAFT HAD BEEN ASSEMBLED INCORRECTLY AND THAT THE QUILL ASSEMBLY HAD FAILED.
Probable cause
THE MECHANIC'S FAILURE TO ASSEMBLE THE TAIL ROTOR DRIVE SHAFT CORRECTLY AND THE SUBSEQUENT FAILURE OF THE TAIL ROTOR DRIVE SHAFT. A FACTOR WAS THE LACK OF INSPECTION PROCEDURES FOR OFFSHORE MAINTENANCE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW91IA143
- Event ID
- 20001212X17863
- Case number
- FTW91IA143
- 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: 3194cdf2b9cc8777eea161892bc01bd18d74e50ac3f349b0093297561226e5ea; retrieved 2026-09-18T18:53:17.331Z.