MIA01LA084 · Boeing Helicopters Div. 369D
Air #2 Boeing Helicopters Div. 369D · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From LZ 397, MS to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA01LA084
- 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
- 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
Boeing Helicopters Div. 369D
- Aircraft type
- Boeing Helicopters Div 369
- 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
- N58377
- Operator
- Air #2
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From LZ 397, MSTo 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Other person › Design stress limits of aircraft, exceeded
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter is configured with an external horizontal platform mounted adjacent to the left loading door, between the fuselage and the skids, for use during in-flight transfer of a lineman from aircraft to structure during inspections of high tension transmission line supports. The exact procedures for the in-flight lineman transfer call for the helicopter-to-structure static electricity grounding cable to be clamped to the structure prior to the actual transfer. By design, the ground cable clamping is the very first procedural task and the unclamping is the very last procedural task. When the pilot sees the cable and clamp returned to its holding pouch on the platform, that is his cue to back the helicopter away from the structure. In this particular occurrence, the procedural tasks got out of sequence, and when the pilot saw the ground cable and clamp in its pouch, he backed the rotorcraft away. The lineman, still tethered to the rotorcraft, was pulled off the structure, and the lineman's choice of safety tether attachment point on the rotorcraft gave way under his weight, causing the fatal fall.
Probable cause
The lineman's failure to use the designed attachment point for securing his safety harness to the helicopter, resulting in overload and failure of the component he did attach to. A factor in the accident was the lineman's failure to follow exact sequential procedures for performing the in-flight transfer from rotorcraft to structure, resulting in his being dragged off the structure by the retreating rotorcraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA01LA084
- Event ID
- 20010301X00525
- Case number
- MIA01LA084
- 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, damage. 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: 937d2e37d2a348a30a8a0687160f6f2702fbb34f93fbc70d997bc3af36f128e0; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:38:46.773Z.