FTW03LA112 · Aerospatiale AS-350-B3
Aerospatiale AS-350-B3 · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Abilene Regional Airport (ABI) to Eastland, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA112
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Aerospatiale AS-350-B3
- 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
- N439AE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Abilene Regional Airport (ABI), Abilene, TXTo Eastland, TX
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- 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
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, continued
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, delayed
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 repositioning flight, the helicopter landed hard after the pilot encountered instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). Prior to departure, the pilot checked the weather for a flight to pick up a patient at another hospital. At the time of the departure, the pilot stated the ceiling was at 1,100 feet and the visibility was 7 miles. Shortly after departure, the weather started to deteriorate and the helicopter encountered IMC. The flight paramedic stated the weather deteriorated rapidly while enroute and requested more than once for the pilot to abort the flight. Prior to reversing direction, the pilot slowed the helicopter and initiated a descent. The pilot was unaware of the descent rate and was unable to slow the descent prior to impacting the terrain. Subsequently, the helicopter landed hard and came to rest upright on a roadway.
Probable cause
the pilot's delayed remedial action and his continued flight into known adverse weather conditions. A contributing factor was the excessive descent rate which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA112
- Event ID
- 20030318X00355
- Case number
- FTW03LA112
- 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: c1f648b02072fbb56c8a9f3ca54edb5ec35e424062a7b6c6d6a1b1c6593809a9; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:32:09.655Z.