Artic Air Service Sikorsky S-76A accident
Sikorsky S-76A · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Santa Maria Public Airport Captain G Allan Hancock Field (SMX) to Santa Maria, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA200
- 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
Sikorsky S-76A
- Aircraft type
- Sikorsky S-76
- 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
- N343AA
- Operator
- Artic Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Maria Public Airport Captain G Allan Hancock Field (SMX), Santa Maria, CATo Santa Maria, CA
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Pole
- 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter's copilot was performing the landing on an oil production platform and making a right pedal turn over the heliport surface when the tail rotor of the helicopter struck a movable derrick. The copilot lost tail rotor authority and landed immediately. The left main gear collapsed and the helicopter rolled onto the left side. The helicopter received structural damage to the tail rotor and main rotor assemblies. The operator reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures of the helicopter. Six days before the accident, the movable derrick on the platform had been positioned to its closest location to the heliport area, 7 feet from the southeast edge of the heliport deck. None of the derricks on the other platforms used by the operator can be positioned this close to the flight deck. The deck area of the accident platform's heliport is 50 feet by 50 feet, compared to an area of about 70 feet by 70 feet on the other platform heliport decks. In the past, the accident platform had different markings than those on the other decks, including a reference line, or "Butt Line," to determine the location of the pilot seat that would allow adequate tail rotor clearance during a pedal turn. The deck on the accident platform had been stripped and repainted about 2 months before the accident, and the new markings were similar to those on the other decks; however, the "H" symbol was offset from the previous position to be about 1 foot closer to the southeast side of the deck, and the reference line had not been repainted.
Probable cause
The copilot's misjudged clearance from an object during a hovering turn for landing. Contributing to the accident were the inadequately marked heliport surface and the close proximity of an obstruction near the landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA200
- Event ID
- 20080711X01019
- Case number
- LAX08LA200
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. 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: ecf12e746f949ca1c97f52a2257bd97b6cb043b3a608c802b4f082d76b47d3d4; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:53:28.157Z.