IAD03LA012 · Westland Helicopters Gazelle AH-MK1
Westland Helicopters Gazelle AH-MK1 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP) to Town of East Hampton Airport (HTO)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD03LA012
- 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
Westland Helicopters Gazelle AH-MK1
- Aircraft type
- Westland GAZELLE AH-MK1
- 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
- N911XW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP), Islip, NYTo Town of East Hampton Airport (HTO), East Hampton, NY
- 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
- En route · 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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 › Altitude, 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
During a flight on a moonless night, the helicopter entered a descent while approaching a shoreline from the landward side. The helicopter crossed the shoreline at an altitude of about 200 feet, then continued outbound, over the water, until radar contact was lost about 24 seconds later. The pilot's logbook was not recovered; however, records indicated that he flew 115 hours of total flight time in another helicopter, including 3 hours of night time, in preparation for his private pilot certificate, which he obtained 4 months prior to the accident. A safety pilot also flew with the accident pilot in the accident helicopter for about 10 additional hours. The accident flight was the pilot's second solo flight in the helicopter, and there was no evidence of mechanical malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate altitude, which resulted in an in-flight collision with water. Factors included the pilot's decision to fly over water on a moonless night, his lack of experience in that environment, and the dark night lighting conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD03LA012
- Event ID
- 20021126X05533
- Case number
- IAD03LA012
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-11-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 16c0dd724df9405b528532a404fe296c767821a1fdfb9e16f132dd9859160f54; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:41:58.880Z.