Enchantment Aviation Aerospatiale AS350 B2 accident
Aerospatiale AS350 B2 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From El Paso International Airport (KELP) to MCGREGOR RANGE, NM
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10FA113
- 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
- 3 · 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
Aerospatiale AS350 B2
- 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
- N157BC
- Operator
- Enchantment Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From El Paso International Airport (KELP), El Paso, TXTo MCGREGOR RANGE, NM
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot and two paramedics were dispatched to a remote desert area for a simulated patient pick up. This was the pilot's second company flight and first uninstructed night vision goggle (NVG) flight since his recent company training. While maneuvering for the landing zone, ground personnel observed the helicopter orbit one or two times and the pilot was using the non-NVG spotlight to illuminate the ground. Ground personnel then observed the helicopter make a wide orbit before it banked about 45 degrees, entered a steep nose-down attitude, and impacted the ground. None of the witnesses reported an attempt by the helicopter to avoid an impact with the ground. A postcrash fire ensued. An examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any preimpact anomalies that would have precluded the safe operation of the helicopter.
On the night of the accident there was zero percent moon illumination and very little cultural lighting in the remote area where the accident occurred, resulting in low visual contrast when using NVG’s. The pilot’s recent NVG training had all been conducted on nights with high moon illumination and in populated areas with high amounts of cultural lighting and did not prepare the pilot for flight in the conditions encountered on the night of the accident. The low visual contrast conditions, combined with the narrow field of view of the NVG’s, reduced the pilot’s ability to maintain situational awareness. The lack of attempted recovery prior to ground impact suggests that the pilot did not recognize the helicopter’s descent rate and bank angle.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of situational awareness resulting in controlled flight into terrain. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's unfamiliarity with the hazards of a low-contrast area while using night vision goggles.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10FA113
- Event ID
- 20100206X10511
- Case number
- CEN10FA113
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-02-06.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ae886117ef97ec7eb023e3d8fa4af87855d2cb5e08816d81fe9abbc52eb31733; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:38:45.393Z.