LAX06CA003 · Aerospatiale AS350B
Aerospatiale AS350B · Accident: hard landing
From Grand Canyon National Park Airport (GCN) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06CA003
- 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 AS350B
- 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
- N31MH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grand Canyon National Park Airport (GCN), Grand Canyon, AZTo 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Pilot in command › Ground resonance, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter encountered a ground resonance event following a hard landing in gusty wind conditions. The pilot reported that the winds were from the south at 18 knots with gusts to 36 knots. He hover-taxied to the helipad for landing following a sightseeing tour and had established the helicopter in a 3-foot hover in preparation for landing. A gust of wind disrupted the helicopter and brought it to a 6-foot hover. The pilot regained control and stabilized it back in a 3-foot hover. Another gust of wind "slammed" the helicopter onto the helipad and a ground resonance event began. The pilot lifted the helicopter back into the air upon noticing the increasing vibrations. After the vibrations dissipated, the pilot set it back onto the helipad.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to maintain control of the helicopter during landing in gusty wind conditions, which resulted in a hard landing and ground resonance.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06CA003
- Event ID
- 20051114X01834
- Case number
- LAX06CA003
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2005-10-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a38ef20fd6609b81cf5f3ff5cac4864217fd45c1128845446c40c023ff8c950c; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:58:33.923Z.