EagleMed Eurocopter AS350B2 accident
Eurocopter AS350B2 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Choctaw Nation Healthcare Center Heliport (OK35) to St Francis Hospital Heliport (4OK3)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13FA344
- 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
- 1 · 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
Eurocopter AS350B2
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter AS350
- 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
- N935EM
- Operator
- Eaglemed
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Choctaw Nation Healthcare Center Heliport (OK35), Talihina, OKTo St Francis Hospital Heliport (4OK3), Tulsa, OK
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2012)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Pole
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The emergency medical service helicopter had been parked for more than an hour on a paved road next to a hospital. Immediately before takeoff during the predeparture safety briefing, the pilot discussed with the medical crew the 20-ft-tall metal lamp post to the helicopter's immediate left front. However, the pilot did not mention the 40-ft-tall metal lamp post that was 175 ft ahead of the helicopter and on the left side of the roadway. During takeoff, while traveling forward and following the center of the 25-ft-wide paved road, the helicopter's rotating main rotor blades impacted the 40-ft-tall lamp post about 24 ft above its base. The pilot was unable to maintain control of the helicopter, and the helicopter impacted the ground and came to rest on its right side about 230 ft from the takeoff point. The pilot reported that during the takeoff and before impact, he never saw the 40-ft-tall lamp post.
Probable cause
The helicopter pilot's failure to see and avoid the 40-ft-tall lamp post during takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's inadequate preflight evaluation of the obstructions in the takeoff path.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13FA344
- Event ID
- 20130612X12326
- Case number
- CEN13FA344
- 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. 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: bb2ff268a1b6f1f05ad0cdbb66dd7a2efe15b3ce701296ea4a2806f43203eb42; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:58:34.580Z.