CEN13WA146 · Bell UH1H
Bell UH1H · Accident
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13WA146
- 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
- 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
- Not recorded
Bell UH1H
- Aircraft type
- Bell UH1
- 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
- HB-RXC
- Operator
- Hanspeter Stricker
- 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., Non-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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On December 20, 2012, at 1523 UTC, a Bell UH-1H, Swiss registration HB-RXC, owned and operated by a private individual, was destroyed when it impacted terrain near Ruthi, Switzerland, following an engine malfunction. The pilot and two passengers on board were not injured. A third passenger received minor injuries. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. The foreign, non-scheduled cross-country flight departed Buchs, Switzerland, and was en route to St-Gallen-Altenrhein, Switzerland.
The helicopter's T53-L-13B engine was examined under the oversight of the National Transportation Safety Board at Honeywell Aerospace, Incorporated, Phoenix, Arizona, on May 21-22, 2013.
This investigation is under the jurisdiction of the government of Switzerland. Any further information regarding the investigation can be obtained from the Swiss Accident Investigation Board at:
Swiss Accident Investigation Board Aviation Division Aeropole 1, Route de Morens, 1530 Payerne Switzerland Telephone: +41 26 662 33 33 Facsimile: +41 26 662 33 01 E-mail: info@sust.admin.ch
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13WA146
- Event ID
- 20130130X24334
- Case number
- CEN13WA146
- 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 local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 83b6fdb17ec060bd6f3d142ef7c20af00b6e515636831c8c96f4e1bac60d73ad; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:52:09.404Z.