DEN00LA019 · Aerospatiale SA341G
Aerospatiale SA341G · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From McGregor, NM (no airport) to Bear Heliport (TS59)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00LA019
- 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 SA341G
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale SA341
- 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
- N341G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McGregor, NM (no airport)To Bear Heliport (TS59)
- 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 · hover in ground effect
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
- Rotorcraft flight control system › Uncommanded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that he saw something on the ground that he wanted to observe. He went into a hover at 5 feet agl. The pilot said that when he initiated his departure, the helicopter made an uncommanded roll to the right causing the main rotor blades to hit the ground. Postaccident examination and testing of the three main rotor blade servos found no anomalies which might have initiated an uncommanded roll. The helicopter manufacturer's representative said that he had never heard of an uncommanded roll in this model of aircraft.
Probable cause
An uncommanded flight control input for undetermined reasons resulting in rotor blade contact with the ground and subsequent loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00LA019
- Event ID
- 20001212X20095
- Case number
- DEN00LA019
- 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: 123fb1ee305aaa64c828d75a891099001d4a51cb302ed5fdbd2a6b3cca04b5c7; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:40:05.097Z.