Performance Helicopters Aerospatiale SA-319B accident
Aerospatiale SA-319B · Accident during landing
From VALDEZQ, AK to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC03LA042
- 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 SA-319B
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale SA-319
- 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
- N119PH
- Operator
- Performance Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From VALDEZQ, AKTo not recorded
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › Ground resonance, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial certificated pilot was landing a wheel/ski-equipped helicopter at a remote spot on a snow-covered ridgeline, about 4,200 feet msl. The pilot said that as the landing gear wheels touched the ridgeline, the helicopter started to shake in ground resonance. He decided to lift off, and the vibration became severe. The pilot said he lowered the collective pitch control and began a descent toward lower terrain. During the descent, the pilot said the helicopter nearly became uncontrollable until he heard one of the main rotor spacing cables snap. The previous 3 per revolution vibrations smoothed out, and became a 1 per revolution vibration. The pilot landed the helicopter on a glacier moraine. After landing, the pilot discovered that the broken spacing cable damaged the inboard trailing edge of one main rotor blade. The tail boom assembly was buckled and torn at the bottom attach point to the fuselage. A postaccident examination of the helicopter revealed that an attaching bolt, used to secure the yellow blade spacing cable to the red blade rotor grip fitting, was missing and the yellow blade damper was compressed. The missing bolt from the spacing cable fitting has a hollow shaft design which enables the bolt to shear when excessively loaded. Under extreme unbalanced conditions, the separation of the spacing cable permits an unbalanced rotor blade additional horizontal movement. Following the accident, the main rotor dampers were sent to an overhaul facility by the operator's insurance company. The overhaul facility reported that examination of the dampers did not reveal any observed malfunction.
Probable cause
The pilot's encounter with a ground resonance condition during the landing touchdown, which resulted in the shearing of a main rotor spacing cable bolt, and buckling of the tail boom.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC03LA042
- Event ID
- 20030417X00525
- Case number
- ANC03LA042
- 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: adc44d4441b43e85696f5c974b2cd3ed1e6d9250abaab8ecb5660e9df9d59905; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:52:54.378Z.