FTW03LA081 · Aerospatiale AS-350-BA
Aerospatiale AS-350-BA · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Main Pass 61A, GM to Tiger Pass Seaplane Base (11LA)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA081
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 AS-350-BA
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale AS-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
- N22TV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Main Pass 61A, GMTo Tiger Pass Seaplane Base (11LA), Venice
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Door, cargo/baggage › Not secured
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the initial descent, at 800 feet agl, the pilot felt a shudder and heard a noise from the helicopter. One of the passengers reported he observed the right baggage door was open and flapping. The helicopter began to yaw to the left, then started to spin, and the pilot inititated an autorotation to the water. Subsequently, the helicopter impacted the water and came to rest partially submerged. The left side float deployed; however, the right side float was not activated. Prior to the accident flight and the engine operating, the pilot dropped off a passenger, another passenger loaded his baggage in the right aft cargo compartment and boarded the helicopter. According to the pilot, the passenger had received a safety briefing regarding the operation of the helicopter's doors and latches. Examination of the helicopter revealed the lower forward latch had been closed; however, it did not engage and secure the door to the striker plate and fiberglass door frame. The tail rotor blades and vertical fin exhibited scratch marks and residual white material that was consistent with foreign object debris (FOD). The one-piece tail rotor drive shaft was sheared just aft of the splined portion of the drive shaft. The failure of the right float was not determined.
Probable cause
The loss of tail rotor drive as a result of baggage coming in contact with the tail rotor blades after the aft cargo door was not secured. A contributing factor was the passenger's failure to follow the procedures for properly securing the helicopter's doors and latches.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA081
- Event ID
- 20030121X00085
- Case number
- FTW03LA081
- 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: 57be219ba3a894f10f9427638e0b643887084b6d0ac45422987650abe0963c55; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:56:14.878Z.