ERA13TA341 · McDonnell Douglas Helicopter 369E
McDonnell Douglas Helicopter 369E · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From London-Corbin Airport/Magee Field (LOZ) to London-Corbin Airport/Magee Field (LOZ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13TA341
- 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
- Government
- 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
McDonnell Douglas Helicopter 369E
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas 369
- 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
- N1608D
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From London-Corbin Airport/Magee Field (LOZ), London, KYTo London-Corbin Airport/Magee Field (LOZ), London, KY
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
- Wire
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
An unmarked and uncharted wire extended between two ridges, the last remaining wire of several that had provided utilities to a mine that was no longer in operation. The pilot did not see the wire and was flying the helicopter between the two ridges, about 500 feet above the valley floor, when the main rotor head contacted the utility wire. The pilot initiated an emergency descent but he had limited control of the helicopter, and it collided with the valley floor. A postcrash fire consumed the wreckage. Because the mine had been closed for a long time, no one had reported the utility wire to the Federal Aviation Administration for addition on the appropriate aeronautical chart.
Probable cause
The helicopter pilot's inadvertent collision with an unmarked and uncharted utility wire of which he was unaware.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13TA341
- Event ID
- 20130729X84808
- Case number
- ERA13TA341
- 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: f157987330f94affd9de42107c06356a97ba95a030d40114e3a7784b82840e52; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:22:31.696Z.