SEA02FA108 · Garlick UH-1H
Garlick UH-1H · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Clark Fork, ID to Clark Fork, ID
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA02FA108
- 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
Garlick UH-1H
- Aircraft type
- Garlick UH-1
- 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
- N114DR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clark Fork, IDTo Clark Fork, ID
- 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
- En route · climb to 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Rotor system, tail rotor › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting long-line logging operations in a restricted category helicopter when witnesses heard what they described as a loud bang. A witness reported that the pilot had just released the fifth load of logs for the morning and was maneuvering, in a turn, and ascending up the hill. As the helicopter ascended, the witness heard the loud bang. Concurrent with the loud bang, the witness stated that he observed pieces of the helicopter, from the area of the tail boom, flying through the air. The helicopter then yawed to the left, just before impacting terrain in a nose low attitude. A search of the surrounding area located several pieces of the tail rotor assembly. The tail rotor blades, yoke assembly, pitch change links, a portion of the slider, crosshead and the distal end of the control shaft were located, as a unit, near the main wreckage. However, the splined barrel portion of the slider, the tail rotor static stop, tail rotor input shaft and tail rotor retaining nut were not found. Detailed examination of the remains of the tail rotor slider assembly revealed that the tail rotor slider lugs had fractured as a result of fatigue; however, because the condition of the missing components is unknown, it could not be determined if the fractured slider assembly was the primary failure of the tail rotor assembly.
Probable cause
A failure of unknown origin in the tail rotor drive assembly. Factors include mountainous terrain unsuitable for an emergency landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA02FA108
- Event ID
- 20020626X00978
- Case number
- SEA02FA108
- 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: 6b80be612629fb09d8eed58b951c7c9b07d5b6066f1e7459658610865c8a23cb; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:59:14.908Z.