ATL02LA097 · Aerospatiale 350B
Aerospatiale 350B · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Lee Gilmer Memorial Airport (GVL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL02LA097
- 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 350B
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale 350
- 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
- N696CH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lee Gilmer Memorial Airport (GVL), Gainesville, 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 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
- 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
- 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
- Check pilot › Procedures/directives, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter collided with terrain during a demonstrated hydraulic servo-control system failure. The check airman brought the helicopter to a hover with hydraulics off. The check airman experienced a gust of wind which pitched and yawed the helicopter onto the right side of the fuselage. A Review of the Eurocopter training syllabus for the AS 350 B1/B2, states in simulated hydraulic servo-control system failures, the "HYD TEST" button should be used when conducting this procedure; and discussion and/or demonstration should be performed in cruise flight at approximately 90 knots. The Gainesville 1900 weather observation reported visibility 10 statue miles, wind direction 310 degrees, wind speed 17 knots, gust 23 knots.
Probable cause
The check airman’s failure to follow prescribed procedures that resulted in the lost of control and subsequent in-flight collision with the terrain. A factor was gusting wind conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL02LA097
- Event ID
- 20020517X00690
- Case number
- ATL02LA097
- 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: 91b116553b43a4e2d511a60bc7dc2ff164eb61e778041f43973e3df6c58f294c; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:56:17.183Z.