ATL02LA067 · Aerospatiale AS315B
Southern States Cooperative Aerospatiale AS315B · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From Hortense, GA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02LA067
- 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
Aerospatiale AS315B
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale AS315
- 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
- N49525
- Operator
- Southern States Cooperative
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hortense, GATo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 · aerial application
- 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
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Rotor drive system, engine to transmission drive › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was 100 feet in the air, at 40 knots, when he heard a bang in the tail section of the helicopter and thought he felt something break loose on the helicopter. There was an immediate loss of power to the main rotor system. The pilot attempted to flare the helicopter as it went into the trees. The helicopter impacted trees at approximately 30 knots, sustaining substantial damage. Examination of the helicopter revealed that the short shaft connecting the engine to the main gear box separated just aft of the connecting flange. Examination of the mounting hardware revealed that the connecting bolts had not been safety wired at the time of the accident. Examination of the helicopters maintenance records and an interview with the helicopter mechanic found that the helicopter had undergone a 400 hour inspection about two days prior to the accident or 10 hours of operation. The mechanic confirmed that he had removed and reinstalled the short shaft prior to the accident but could not recall if he had safety wired the connecting bolts as called for in the helicopters maintenance manual.
Probable cause
Failure of the engine to main transmission drive shaft due to improper installation by company maintenance personnel. A factor were the trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02LA067
- Event ID
- 20020402X00438
- Case number
- ATL02LA067
- 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: b0cceed60d4e24090963c83e25ba0133a8757b04e6b9ea279f36a99f5eef0f2d; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:45:23.451Z.