Texair Helicopters Aerospatiale AS350BA accident
Aerospatiale AS350BA · Accident: in flight collision with object during landing
From Ship Shoal 79, GM to Ship Shoal 80, GM
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA178
- 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 AS350BA
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale AS350
- 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
- N147BH
- Operator
- Texair Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ship Shoal 79, GMTo Ship Shoal 80, GM
- 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
- 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 object
- 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 › Clearance, 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
The pilot made a "normal" approach into the wind to the center of an off-shore helipad and was terminating to a 4 to 5-foot hover. As the pilot leveled the helicopter to set it down on the deck, he heard a loud "metal crunching" noise coming from the rear of the aircraft. The helicopter began rotating to the left and drifting rearward. The pilot was able to set the helicopter on the deck after it made about 1.5 revolutions. The pilot reported that the wind was from 120 degrees at 10 knots. An examination of the landing area, by an FAA inspector, revealed damage to the safety fence that was consistent with tail rotor contact.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance with the safety fence while landing on an off-shore helipad.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA178
- Event ID
- 20030709X01049
- Case number
- FTW03LA178
- 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: ee175486309bdd5ef10dd06ba3e255159620df2e291f8dd837622838ed8b6b7c; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:44:46.050Z.