LAX02FA276 · Bell 222U
Mercy Air Service Bell 222U · Accident: rotor failure/malfunction while maneuvering
From Pahrump, NV to Baker, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02FA276
- 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
- 3 · 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
Bell 222U
- Aircraft type
- Bell 222
- 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
- N417MA
- Operator
- Mercy Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pahrump, NVTo Baker, CA
- 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
- 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
- Rotor failure/malfunction
- 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
- Rotor system, main rotor blade › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At 0401, in dark night conditions, the helicopter departed its hospital base en route to an automobile accident. At 0414 the flight crew informed the ambulance crew at the accident site that they were 16 minutes out. At 0416 the flight crew made a radio call to company dispatch informing them that operations were normal. At 0420 the flight crew contacted the ambulance crew a second time and informed them that they were 3 minutes out. At 0427 company dispatch personnel made two attempts to contact the flight crew, both of which were unsuccessful. After passing over an interstate highway, the helicopter impacted terrain in a near 45 degree nose low attitude. Two witnesses observed the helicopter flying low and slow, one estimating between 150 to 200 feet, and shining its searchlight before hitting the ground. Another witness reported seeing a very strong light sweeping across the ground from side to side and traveling at a very low height, comparing it to a police helicopter hovering low when searching, and said the helicopter appeared to be trying to land. Examination of the accident site revealed evidence of a main rotor blade separation with a debris field consisting of main rotor blade skin, honeycomb, and paint chips located 938 feet upstream of the main impact crater. Post-accident examination of the helicopter's component parts, including the main rotor blades, failed to reveal the cause for the main rotor blade separation. Examination of the aircraft's engines revealed no pre-impact anomalies.
Probable cause
The main rotor blade separation while maneuvering for unknown reasons. A factor was the dark night condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02FA276
- Event ID
- 20020918X05173
- Case number
- LAX02FA276
- 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: 1afdc5304f6073ad82446916a097a69d6e6dd38b4043799f1ea58127957121ec; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:52:53.169Z.