CEN12LA053 · Eurocopter EC 130 B4
Sweetwater Helicopters Eurocopter EC 130 B4 · Accident: hard landing
From Adderly's Pad Heliport (1IN8) to Indianapolis Downtown Heliport (8A4)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA053
- 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
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Eurocopter EC 130 B4
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter EC-130
- 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
- N130AL
- Operator
- Sweetwater Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Adderly's Pad Heliport (1IN8), Fort Wayne, INTo Indianapolis Downtown Heliport (8A4), Indianapolis, IN
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 reported that before departure, he checked two internet weather services for his flight’s weather briefing. The weather forecast indicated visual meteorological conditions for the entire flight. The internet weather service used by the pilot contained a disclaimer stating the service “is not a substitute for an official flight briefing.” The weather was reportedly good until 10 miles north of the destination, where the flight encountered rain and low ceilings. The onboard radar indicated that weather had deteriorated behind the route of flight and along the proposed route of flight. Weather conditions continued to deteriorate and the pilot elected to perform a precautionary landing with a quartering tailwind. About 30 feet above the ground, the helicopter settled rapidly. The pilot added power to slow the descent and the helicopter made a firm landing with about 10 knots of forward speed. The right skid then dug into the soft field and the helicopter rolled onto its right side. A ground fire subsequently ensued.
The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions with the helicopter during the flight. The helicopter’s Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM) stated that the primary source of preflight weather briefings is an individual briefing obtained from a briefer. Other sources include the internet-accessed Direct User Access Terminal System. The AIM advises that weather services provided by entities other than Federal Aviation Administration, National Weather Service (NWS), or their contractors may not meet quality control standards; the internet sites the pilot referenced were not supported by these entities. The AIM also indicated all "flight-related, aviation weather decisions must be based on primary weather products" that meet regulatory requirements. Prior to departure the NWS was reporting instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) in the destination area and an AIRMET for IMC was current for the route of flight that extended over the accident site.
Probable cause
The hard landing the pilot performed with a quartering tailwind, leading to the helicopter's rollover. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s reliance on a weather service that did not provide a primary weather product.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA053
- Event ID
- 20111104X91020
- Case number
- CEN12LA053
- 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: 626117699764a9e7d748c056b6a0e982ffaa46ab476c1cf101a6be86c648eac1; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:54:55.025Z.