Air Methods Eurocopter MBB-BK 117C-2 accident
Eurocopter MBB-BK 117C-2 · Accident: hard landing
From ECU Health Medical Center Heliport (NC91) to Morehead City, NC
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11LA106
- 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 MBB-BK 117C-2
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter MBB-BK
- 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
- N854EC
- Operator
- Air Methods
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From ECU Health Medical Center Heliport (NC91), Greenville, NCTo Morehead City, NC
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting a night emergency medical services flight with no patient on board. When the helicopter was about 12 miles south of the airport, he radioed air traffic control (ATC) and declared an emergency, due to a personal medical incapacitation. He requested a vector to a nearby airport and in response the controller provided him with a position report and began giving him vectors. Subsequently, the pilot overflew the airport and was then given a vector back to the airport. The pilot landed on a runway at the airport with assistance on the flight controls by a flight nurse seated in the front seat. During the landing the helicopter bounced and experienced a hard landing. The helicopter, which was examined by personnel at the helicopter's manufacturer, sustained substantial damage to the structure.
Postaccident interviews with the pilot revealed that while in cruise flight, and shortly after he disengaged the autopilot, his right arm fell to his side. Medical records of the pilot’s treatment following the accident documented the sudden onset of right hand weakness and slurred speech while piloting the helicopter, with the subsequent identification of two recent strokes on an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) medical records documented that the pilot also had experienced a small stroke approximately 4 years prior to the accident. There was no evidence in the FAA records of any formal evaluation of the risk of a recurrent stroke for this pilot or of any formal FAA neurology evaluation. The pilot's records did reflect that no definitive cause for a previous stroke was found, that the pilot had a family history of stroke, that the pilot was increasingly obese, and that the pilot’s physician had discontinued a medication prescribed in part to reduce the pilot’s risk of a future stroke.
Probable cause
The pilot's impairment during cruise flight due to a recurring stroke. Contributing to the accident was the Federal Aviation Administration's inadequate oversight of the pilot's known medical condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11LA106
- Event ID
- 20110105X95224
- Case number
- ERA11LA106
- 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, 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: 27ef4f3376b01a9f87dea47ea00d0a1e3d39fb2f4442d0337cd11d2549b71730; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:40:14.505Z.