ERA11FA042 · MD Helicopters Inc 369E
Winco MD Helicopters Inc 369E · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Thomas, WV to Thomas, WV
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11FA042
- 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
- 1 · 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
MD Helicopters Inc 369E
- Aircraft type
- MD Helicopters 369
- 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
- N765WH
- Operator
- Winco
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Thomas, WVTo Thomas, WV
- 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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
- Maneuvering · hover
- 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
- 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
- Wire
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot transitioned the helicopter to pick up three linemen who were working from the peak of a 100-foot-tall transmission tower. Before the linemen boarded the helicopter (two were in the helicopter and one was on the skid), they secured their equipment to the external load grappling hook suspended 50 feet below the helicopter. The pilot positioned the helicopter adjacent to the tower structure between the two sets of electrical conductors, with the grappling hook and the linemen's equipment suspended below. As the pilot attempted to maneuver the helicopter clear of the tower, it paused, and then began to shake before the helicopter contacted wires on the opposite end of the tower and impacted the ground under power. Both of the linemen who were seated in the helicopter before it impacted the ground incurred minor injuries; the lineman standing on the helicopter's skid was fatally injured. The pilot did not attempt to release the external load at any point during the accident sequence, and postaccident testing of the system revealed no anomalies. Postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures of the helicopter. Examination of the power transmission tower and external-load sling revealed evidence consistent with entanglement of the external load with the tower's structure. Immediate compliance with the operator's recommended procedure of jettisoning the external load in the event of an emergency (actual or perceived) would have provided an opportunity for the pilot to have prevented the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to clear the helicopter and its external load from surrounding structures and his failure to execute a timely release of the external load, which resulted in an inadvertent entanglement and collision with wires and terrain. Contributing to the lineman's fatal injury was his position outside of the helicopter during the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11FA042
- Event ID
- 20101030X30541
- Case number
- ERA11FA042
- 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: 52571c8c3492fcd691a507e1178ee0bde8626c930956209cf4e8ac908611c536; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:06:58.134Z.