FTW01FA021 · Eurocopter AS350B2
Eurocopter AS350B2 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From William P. Hobby Airport (HOU) to David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (DWH)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW01FA021
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Eurocopter AS350B2
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter 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
- N126TV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From William P. Hobby Airport (HOU), Houston, TXTo David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport (DWH), Spring, TX
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire, transmission; Utility pole
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The turbine powered helicopter was on a 29 nautical mile night flight over a city. Two law enforcement officers, located about two blocks northeast of the accident site, reported observing the helicopter "flying at a very low altitude" northbound. The officers walked around the building to a parking lot where they met another officer. All three officers heard the helicopter fly over the parking lot in a southwest direction. The officers looked for the helicopter, but they could not see it due to the poor visibility. When the helicopter came into view, it was "banked to the right" traveling in a westerly direction. The helicopter continued in a downward direction, and then a "huge fireball" was observed. The helicopter struck wires, a power pole and an above ground gas meter. An electrical transformer exploded, and the helicopter was consumed by the ensuing fire. The destination airport had IFR weather conditions at the time of departure. Witnesses estimated that at the time of the accident, there was an overcast ceiling of about 300-400 feet. No record was found of any preflight weather briefing obtained by the pilot. No pre-impact anomalies were observed during an examination of the airframe and engine.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain obstacle clearance while maneuvering, which resulted in an in-flight collision with objects. Contributing factors were the dark night and low ceilings.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW01FA021
- Event ID
- 20001212X22284
- Case number
- FTW01FA021
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2000-11-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: af719691d934572c29d3f938c462c68598b90211f3a8e5a3418d44910f0c6aa3; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:46:51.946Z.