Columbia Helicopters Peru Boeing-Vertol 234 accident
Boeing-Vertol 234 · Accident: aircraft structural failure en route
From Cap FAP David Abenzur Rengifo International Airport (SPCL) to Cadete FAP Guillermo Del Castillo Paredes Airport (SPST)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13RA106
- 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
- Final · CIAA final report, Jun 2016
- API-reported fatalities
- 7 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Boeing-Vertol 234
- Aircraft type
- Boeing Vertol 234
- 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
- N241CH
- Operator
- Columbia Helicopters Peru
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cap FAP David Abenzur Rengifo International Airport (SPCL), PucallpaTo Cadete FAP Guillermo Del Castillo Paredes Airport (SPST), Tarapoto
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Aircraft structural failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On January 7, 2013, about 2002 universal coordinated time (1502 local time), a Boeing-Vertol 234, N241CH, operated by Columbia Helicopters Peru, S.A.C., was destroyed during an inflight breakup and subsequent impact with terrain near Pucallpa, Peru. The U.S. commercial-rated pilot, Peruvian private-rated co-pilot, and five additional company employees of both U.S. and Peruvian nationality were fatally injured. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed. The sling-load positioning flight had departed FAP Captain David Abenzur Rengifo Interbnational Airport (SPCL), Pucallpa, Peru, about 5 minutes earlier, en route to Cadet FAP Guillermo del Castillo Paredes Airport (SPST), Tarapoto, Peru, and was operating under Peruvian flight regulations.
The investigation is under the direction of the Republic of Peru.
For further information contact:
Comision de Investigacion de Accidentes de Aviacion (CIAA) Direccion General de Aeronautica Civil Avenida Jiron Zorritos 1203 Lima 1 Peru Central: 6157800
Tel: ( 511 ) 315 - 7800
http://www.mtc.gob.pe/portal/transportes/aereo/ciaa/ciaa.htm
This report is for informational purposes, and only contains information released by the Republic of Peru.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13RA106
- Event ID
- 20130108X72905
- Case number
- ERA13RA106
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 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: cad2a692e7441a504dddb2cc18991783b3ff505affba3ec3a5f1d1c92cf54853; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:51:48.959Z.
- Checked against the Comisión de Investigación de Accidentes de Aviación (CIAA), Ministerio de Transportes y Comunicaciones, Peru final report (2016-06) on 2026-09-18. The report states the same date, fatalities, registration, operator, departure, destination and damage. Taken from the report: ground fatalities. Not checked: place, crash-site coordinates, flight number, aircraft type and type of operation.