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Expedition Helicopters Aerospatiale AS350 B2 accident

27 May 2011 · Big Trout Lake, Ontario, Canada

Aerospatiale AS350 B2 · Accident

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Event

NTSB case
ENG11WA038
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
Event fatalities
Unknown
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
Not recorded

Aerospatiale AS350 B2

Aircraft type
Aerospatiale AS350
Category
Helicopter · from aircraft type
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
C-GSSS
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From not recordedTo not recorded
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
Not recorded
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
Not recorded
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.

Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.

NTSB narrative

An Expedition Helicopters Aerospatiale AS 350 B-2, registration C-GSSS, powered by a Honeywell LTS-101-700-D engine, was substantially damaged during an emergency autorotation landing following an in-flight engine shutdown. According to the Transportation Safety Board of Canada,the helicopter was transporting a drilling crew from a base camp about 80 miles east of Big Trout Lake, Ontario, to a drill site, when, while in cruise flight, an uncommanded left yaw was experienced. The pilot performed an autorotation and the helicopter landed hard in shallow water near the shore of a lake. The helicopter was substantially damaged, but all occupants exited the helicopter safely and waded to shore.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is investigating this event. For further information, contact:

Mr. Ross Penden, Investigator-In-Charge Transportation Safety Board of Canada Tele: +1-204-983-2847; Mobile +1-204 771-6999 Email: ross.peden@tsb.gc.ca

This report is for informational purposes and contains only information obtained for or released by the TSB.

Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset

Sources

NTSB record ENG11WA038
Event ID
20110714X71229
Case number
ENG11WA038
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 UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: d24f845c1031c0845fad9b5c6d60bb1a24c292d5a13a71a096dca730016c8c70; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:27:21.767Z.