DEN08RA132 · McDonnell Douglas MD-902
McDonnell Douglas MD-902 · Accident
From Lille Hospital to Fourmies
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN08RA132
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- 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
McDonnell Douglas MD-902
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas MD-902
- 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
- OO-NHL
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lille HospitalTo Fourmies
- 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
- Non-U.S., Non-Commercial
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
- Not recorded
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On August 2, 2008, at 0835 coordinated universal time (1035 central European Summer Time), a McDonnell Douglas MD-902, Belgium registered OO-NHL, operated by Noordzee Helikopters Vlaanderen, experienced a separation of the right hand sliding door while in flight near Fretin, France. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. The pilot, doctor, and nurse were not injured. The flight originated from Lille Hospital, Lille, France, and was en route to Fourmies, France.
The French investigators reported that while in cruise flight, the pilot experienced a "heavy/violent yaw to the right followed by a descent of the helicopter." At the same time, the flight nurse reported to the pilot that the right side door had separated.
The accident investigation is under the jurisdiction and control of the French government. This report is for informational purposes only and contains only information released by or obtained from the French government or Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses. Further information pertaining to this accident may be obtained from:
Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses Zone Sud 200 rue de Paris Aêroport du Bourget 93350 Le Bourget Cedex France
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN08RA132
- Event ID
- 20080903X01366
- Case number
- DEN08RA132
- 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: 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: a4dfcc34e2e0f6f1a36797a2473b6fafc447d1b547b63c6739984005b080509c; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:08:33.870Z.