Air Methods Eurocopter AS 350 B3 accident
Eurocopter AS 350 B3 · Accident: hard landing
From Arivaca, AZ to Carondelet St Mary's Hospital Helistop (65AZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09FA464
- 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
Eurocopter AS 350 B3
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter AS-350
- 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
- N103LN
- Operator
- Air Methods
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arivaca, AZTo Carondelet St Mary's Hospital Helistop (65AZ), Tucson, AZ
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was in the final phase of the landing approach. About 5 feet over the hospital landing pad, the helicopter started to yaw left in an uncommanded fashion. The pilot countered the yaw with right anti torque pedal, which had no effect. He then rapidly lowered the collective and the helicopter landed hard and came to rest facing the opposite direction. Inspection of the helicopter revealed buckled skin on the tail boom approximately 2 feet aft of where the tail boom attaches to the rear structure. Hospital surveillance video captured the landing and showed the helicopter approach the landing spot. The helicopter then yawed left and landed facing the direction it came from. The event spanned about 4 seconds from the beginning of the yaw to the landing. The pilot stated that the winds were out of the west at 2-3 knots. Winds reported at the nearest weather reporting facility (6 miles to the southeast) at the time were 350 degrees at 7 knots. Examination of the helicopter control system revealed no anomalies and all system components functioned appropriately when tested.
Probable cause
The loss of directional control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09FA464
- Event ID
- 20090924X34441
- Case number
- WPR09FA464
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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 2009-09-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 681bfb1c83b589a5f3450691a6ca213cdac60254fe5b5e2c0cc13dc93420154e; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:20:42.647Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: destination. Typo in city name; the event location is Tucson, AZ.