SEA04LA074 · Schramm Helicycle
Schramm Helicycle · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Montour, ID to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA04LA074
- 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
Schramm Helicycle
- Aircraft type
- Schramm HELICYCLE
- 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
- N3275Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montour, IDTo 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 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Reason for occurrence undetermined
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 participated in a photo shoot earlier in the morning before landing and being refueled by company ground support personnel. Communication with the departing helicopter was maintained with ground support personnel until it went around a hill and out of sight. The aircraft was subsequently reported missing and located later in the day, partially submerged in a river located approximately 1 mile northwest of the departure point. There were no witnesses to the accident. An examination of the accident site revealed extensive damage to the helicopter due to impact forces with the water. The tail rotor, tail rotor drive shaft, and a major portion of the empennage and the fuel tanks were missing and never recovered. The engine and accessories were separated from the helicopter's airframe structure. The main rotor mast was free to turn and remained connected to the gearbox. Control continuity could not be determined due to the extensive damage to the helicopter. A small metal arm welded to the tail rotor pedal control torque tube was broken off. An examination of the rudder pedal assembly by the NTSB Materials Laboratory revealed that the fracture surface patterns were consistent with a bending overstress separation. It could not be determined whether the overstress condition was the result of a precrash or postcrash event. The pilot's helmet, equipped with a video recording device, was not recoverd during the postcrash recovery.
Probable cause
In flight collision with terrain for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA04LA074
- Event ID
- 20040505X00557
- Case number
- SEA04LA074
- 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: 5dcc5a1c731c4d3bf4759d9c4c3c9838844b374535bf8c9390c354dc8422430e; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:29:50.483Z.