SEA01LA043 · S.N.I.A.S SE 3130 Alouette II
S.N.I.A.S SE 3130 Alouette II · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From U59 · Driggs, ID to U59
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA01LA043
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
S.N.I.A.S SE 3130 Alouette II
- Aircraft type
- S SE-3130
- 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
- N31330
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From U59 · Driggs, IDTo U59
- 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
- Landing
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the flight was uneventful until the landing. When the helicopter touched down on the ramp, the cyclic control began to shake "very violently" in his hand along with the helicopter starting to move forward and aft. The pilot thought that it might be ground resonance and lifted off to a hover. The condition worsened, and the pilot increased the hover. The helicopter began to oscillate and the pilot could not stabilize the movement. The pilot then turned the helicopter to the left then back to the right to verify the location of a fuel truck. When the truck was locate, the pilot lowered the collective to land. The right rear skid contacted the surface first and the helicopter rocked forward and to the right. The helicopter rolled to the right, coming to rest on its right side. Post-accident inspection of the main rotor dampers found no mechanical failures or malfunctions.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA01LA043
- Event ID
- 20010206X00406
- Case number
- SEA01LA043
- 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, coordinates. 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: a9887d65a1567c9cfd0c5e2aa358c349615146887419d9474e865a2cead77b62; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:12:09.892Z.