SEA02LA115 · Seattle Aerotech Helipower 2500
Seattle Aerotech Helipower 2500 · Accident: hard landing during an emergency descent
From Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO) to Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA02LA115
- 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
Seattle Aerotech Helipower 2500
- Aircraft type
- Seattle Aerotech HELIPOWER 2500
- 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
- N13RM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO), Arlington, WATo Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO), Arlington, WA
- 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
- Emergency descent
- 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
- Hard landing
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
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 on the accident flight, he initially performed a hover and 360-degree pedal turn without problems. He stated that he then entered forward flight at 10 MPH, and then transitioned back to a hover at 3 feet above ground level (AGL), again without problems. He reported that he then turned around and entered forward flight in the opposite direction at 6 feet AGL and 20 MPH, again without problems. He stated that he then turned around again and entered forward flight at 30 MPH. He reported that as he decelerated from 30 MPH back toward a hover, the helicopter experienced a violent vibration of sufficient severity that he felt an immediate run-on landing was necessary. During the run-on landing, the helicopter nosed down, the forward blade struck the ground and the aft blade severed the helicopter's tail boom. The pilot reported that he then saw a flash in the helicopter's engine compartment in his peripheral vision, and thus decided to egress the helicopter immediately. After the pilot egressed, the helicopter's fuel tank caught fire and the helicopter burned. Post accident examination of the helicopter by personnel from the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration disclosed no evidence as to the cause of the vibration or its origin.
Probable cause
Aircraft control not maintained during a run-on landing. A vibration of unknown origin was a factor in the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA02LA115
- Event ID
- 20020702X01030
- Case number
- SEA02LA115
- 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: 7640eae64de8aaaa9b525efbadcebf4e460b89bba7b6ce509f387b03c5a94f62; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:47:27.154Z.