Aramco Associated Agusta SPA A109E accident
Agusta SPA A109E · Accident: ground resonance while standing
From Ras Tanajib Airport (OETN) to Ras Tanajib
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09WA478
- 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
- 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
Agusta SPA A109E
- Aircraft type
- Agusta A109
- 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
- N906AH
- Operator
- Aramco Associated
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ras Tanajib Airport (OETN), Ras TanajibTo Ras Tanajib
- 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., 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
- Standing · engine(s) operating
- 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
- Ground resonance
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On August 22, 2009, at 0506 universal coordinated time, an Agusta 109E helicopter, N906AH, operated by Saudi Aramco Aviation, sustained substantial damage during landing and a post crash fire at barge Arabyia 4, in the Persian Gulf, near Ras Tanajib, Saudi Arabia. The pilot and 4 passengers were not injured. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed for the flight that departed Ras Tanajib Airport (OETN), at 0456.
According to the operator, the helicopter touched down on the barge, the helicopter began to shake, the main rotor contacted the tail boom and cabin, and a fire ensued. During the accident sequence, the pilot was able to secure the engines and stop the main rotor with the rotor brake. The pilot and passengers exited the helicopter uninjured, and barge personnel extinguished the fire.
The accident occurred in the vicinity of 28 degrees, 05 minutes north latitude, 048 degrees, 44 minutes east longitude.
This investigation is under the jurisdiction of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Any further information pertaining to this accident may be obtained from:
General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA) P.O. Box 887, Jeddah, 21165 Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Tel: 966-2685-5515 Fax: 966-2-685-5507
This report is for informational purposes and contains only information released by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09WA478
- Event ID
- 20090824X41520
- Case number
- ERA09WA478
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2271f9a7a3b782369b238520dcbcade2c97927b8e81c552394a615180903e3b3; retrieved 2026-09-15T12:50:13.505Z.