Sunshine Helicopters Aerospatiale AS350BA accident
Aerospatiale AS350BA · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Kahului International Airport (OGG) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX99LA282
- 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
- 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
Aerospatiale AS350BA
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale 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
- N6094S
- Operator
- Sunshine Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kahului International Airport (OGG), Kahului, 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Pilot in command › Go-around, not performed
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Rotor RPM, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Settling with power, encountered
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he made a downwind approach to an open area at a remote ranch for noise abatement reasons. He stated that he misjudged the wind speed and found himself slower and lower than he originally planned, as he turned base to final, and encountered a power settling condition. The pilot attempted to apply left pedal to turn the helicopter back into the wind, but the helicopter continued the descent and landed hard. The rotor rpm horn came on just prior to contact with the ground.
Probable cause
The pilot's initial misjudgment of the wind speed and his decision to continue a downwind landing approach when his speed and altitude profile was inadequate, and his failure to maintain main rotor rpm, resulting in settling with power and a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX99LA282
- Event ID
- 20001212X19565
- Case number
- LAX99LA282
- 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: c96a51d37aa701719be472bc8855b02b74f923b4993684eaadf0f15dfb62931e; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:53:52.741Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N6094S; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.