Island Express Helicopters Aerospatiale AS350D incident
Aerospatiale AS350D · Incident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Avalon, CA to Long Beach, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX89IA242
- 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
Aerospatiale AS350D
- 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
- N143EH
- Operator
- Island Express Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Avalon, CATo Long Beach, CA
- 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
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Fuel system, pump › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT WAS ABOUT 15 MINUTES INTO HIS OVER WATER FLIGHT WHEN THE ENGINE FAILED. THE FLOATS WERE DEPLOYED AND A SUCCESSFUL AUTOROTATION WAS MADE IN THE OCEAN. THE DRIVE SPLINES ON THE ENGINE DRIVEN FUEL PUMP EXHIBITED EVIDENCE OF EXCESSIVE ASYMMETRICAL WEAR AND THE ENGINE ACCESSORY DRIVE GEAR THAT DROVE THE FUEL PUMP SPLINES WAS EXCESSIVELY WORN. THE EXCESSIVE CLEARANCE BETWEEN THE GEAR AND SPLINE PERMITTED SLIPPAGE IN THE FUEL PUMP DRIVE SYSTEM.
Probable cause
THE FAILURE OF THE ENGINE DRIVEN FUEL PUMP.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX89IA242
- Event ID
- 20001213X28859
- Case number
- LAX89IA242
- 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: 6b2cf6cdf193c9bf777fdc760604979159d7d437034fd47cc5460752d222f12e; retrieved 2026-09-18T19:09:53.701Z.