CEN14LA103 · Bell 430
Chevron U S A Bell 430 · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From MP313, GM to West Delta 109, GM
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA103
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Bell 430
- Aircraft type
- Bell 430
- 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
- N430CT
- Operator
- Chevron U S A
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From MP313, GMTo West Delta 109, GM
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2002)
- 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
- Maneuvering · hover
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that she was making a normal approach to the oil platform. Both cranes were shut down on the oil platform, and she received a green deck for landing. The helicopter was over the landing circle when she turned the helicopter's tail and felt a severe shudder. She immediately landed and shut down the helicopter. The examination of the helicopter and landing platform revealed that the tail rotor blades had struck a handrail on the east crane davit, which resulted in substantial damage to the tail rotor gearbox and drivetrain.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain tail rotor clearance from a handrail on a crane davit on an oil platform during landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA103
- Event ID
- 20140106X31044
- Case number
- CEN14LA103
- 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: 08b796a27940249650f616b796cde11c6d128ac853d96d284a4deb901d3df4c1; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:14:01.363Z.