DEN04LA149 · American Eurocopter AS-350-B3
American Eurocopter AS-350-B3 · Accident: roll over while maneuvering
From 73E · Las Cruces, NM to Las Cruces International Airport (LRU)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04LA149
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
American Eurocopter AS-350-B3
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter 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
- N497AE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 73E · Las Cruces, NMTo Las Cruces International Airport (LRU), Las Cruces, NM
- 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 · hover in ground effect
- 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
- Roll over
- 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 › Aircraft control, 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 said that prior to the helicopter's liftoff he checked for and had freedom of controls and no warning or caution lights. He said he had no lights on in the cockpit except "very dim instrument and nav-radio lights." The moon was full, overhead, and bright. The pilot elected not to turn on his searchlight and landing and taxi lights for takeoff. The helicopter came up light on the skids and began a vertical ascent. "The nose began to go left, so I applied right pedal - it seemed stuck/blocked. Within 1 to 2 seconds the aircraft began a right roll. I applied left pressure with the cyclic, but it too seemed extremely stiff and/or stuck." The helicopter rolled over on its right side causing substantial damage. The weather conditions at the time of the accident were reported as clear skies, 10 miles visibility, and winds of 170 degrees at 4 knots. An examination of the helicopter's flight controls and other systems revealed no anomalies. The helipad was located in a former gravel pit with pale white-colored sandy soil surrounding and rising above the pad in all quadrants. Ground scars and paint transfers observed were consistent with the ground resonance spring on the right skid coming in contact with the pad. The ground scars' pattern indicated the helicopter was moving laterally and aft when the spring made first contact with the pad, subsequently initiating a dynamic rollover of the aircraft.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain aircraft control during takeoff resulting in the helicopter's skid striking the helipad and the helicopter's subsequent rollover. Factors contributing to the accident were the pilot's improper preflight planning/decision, his failure to use the helicopter's landing/taxi lights and searchlight, the bright night, and the pilots diminished ability to see visual references.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04LA149
- Event ID
- 20040928X01511
- Case number
- DEN04LA149
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-09-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 97a318ec08fb2ff899414f6c46180435f74d9ecca558a9d309ceca966f21d6cd; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:07:53.667Z.