DEN00FA084 · Aerospatiale AS-350B
Peace Helicopters Aerospatiale AS-350B · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00FA084
- 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
- 3 · 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 AS-350B
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale 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
- CGPTT
- Operator
- Peace Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft handling, abrupt
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was assigned to fly for a geophysical seismic team in rugged high desert conditions (elevation 5,366 feet). On his second day of flying, he was requested, by one of the team members, to "fly a little easier; less aggressively." On his third day of flying, he was assigned to pick up five team members and their equipment. Once airborne (density altitude was 8,908 feet), he had been briefed that he would receive GPS team distribution coordinates; instead, he was instructed to land and hold for a period of time. A witness observed the helicopter fly eastbound, and then make a 45 to 60 degree bank turn [180 degrees] back to the west. The witness then saw the helicopter turn southbound, lower its nose down almost vertically, and then reduce its nose low pitch to approximately 45 degrees as it disappeared from sight. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the manual throttle pointer on the fuel control was in the emergency position. The first and second stage turbine wheels were found with their blades 50 to 70 percent melted, indicating an engine that functioned for a time at a temperature level well above its limits.
Probable cause
the pilot's loss of aircraft control due to abrupt flight maneuvering. Contributing factors were the high density altitude weather condition, the total loss of engine power due to the pilot manually introducing excessive fuel into the engine and over temping the turbine section, and the lack of suitable terrain for the ensuing autorotation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00FA084
- Event ID
- 20001212X20971
- Case number
- DEN00FA084
- 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: 2d1bf4fec9d3698fe80b168e4333b9727a691443a1baa779b559316c380849c4; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:15:06.571Z.