DFW06TA127 · Aerospatiale AS350-B3
Aerospatiale AS350-B3 · Accident: hard landing
From Santa Teresa, NM to El Paso International Airport (ELP)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW06TA127
- 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
- 0
- 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
- Government
- 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 AS350-B3
- 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
- N183AE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Teresa, NMTo El Paso International Airport (ELP), El Paso, TX
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- 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(cfi) › Supervision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the instructional flight was to conduct simulated emergency governor operations. The single-engine helicopter landed hard in a near level flight attitude in a slight tail low attitude. The landing gear skids collapsed on impact causing the lower vertical fin and tail rotor assembly to make contact with the ground, bucking the tailboom at the forward attaching points. The helicopter slid on it's fuselage 250 feet from the point of impact and came to rest in an upright position. The left pilot seat attenuated as designed but there was no evidence of attenuation on the right pilot seat. The crew performed an emergency engine shutdown and egressed unassisted. The wreckage of the helicopter was recovered to the facilities of the operator's secured facilities for further examination. The investigator examined the helicopter systems and tested the throttle twist grip for anomalies. The tests on the throttle twist grip simulated actions taken during the training flight. Several cycles of the governor from the "auto" mode to the "manual" mode for two minutes and back to the auto made for 3 minutes were performed to determine if a problem would occur that would restrict manual throttle operation. The examination determined after several cycles, that the solenoid that retracted to allow manual throttle manipulation would not fully retract and created a restriction due to heat generated during the activation. The helicopter seats were examined to determine if the any anomalies existed with the crash attenuating seats. The left front seat was documented as fully attenuating during the crash sequence and the right front seat had not attenuated. The seats were shipped for analysis to it's manufacturer's facilities in France for further testing. The examination and testing revealed that the seats met specifications and evidence on the right seat showed that the seat attenuation was initiating but did not appear to have sustained sufficient forces to fully stroke.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's improper supervision of the flight which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW06TA127
- Event ID
- 20060608X00715
- Case number
- DFW06TA127
- 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: 2331f3d96530a280898b6d30f1e61cde81162482edeeb1bbef354b92ed6ff016; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:15:11.548Z.