EagleMed Airbus Helicopters AS-350B2 accident
Airbus Helicopters AS-350B2 · Accident: powerplant system/component malfunction/failure en route
From Idabel, OK to Texarkana, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA312
- 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
- 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
Airbus Helicopters AS-350B2
- Aircraft type
- Airbus AS-350
- 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
- N407EM
- Operator
- Eaglemed
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Idabel, OKTo Texarkana, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 28 years (built 1986)
- 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
- 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
- Powerplant system/component malfunction/failure
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot and two flight crewmembers were conducting an emergency medical services flight. The helicopter was in cruise flight when the pilot noticed that the rotor rpm had rapidly increased and that the high rotor aural warning had sounded. Despite troubleshooting efforts, the pilot was unable to reduce the rotor rpm, so he performed on autorotation to a field. During the subsequent run-on landing, the helicopter touched down hard. During the landing, the main rotors contacted and partially severed the tailboom.
Disassembly of the fuel control unit (FCU) revealed that the two drive bearings that ensure drive integrity between the FCU and the fuel pump had failed. The failure of the bearings led to excessive wear in the races and degraded the drive shaft such that it could no longer provide positive drive to the FCU, which the FCU interpreted as an underspeed condition. This led the FCU to command more power to the engine and resulted in an engine overspeed condition. Metallurgical testing of the FCU drive bearings did not reveal the reason for their failure. As a result of this accident, the engine manufacturer adjusted the FCU bearing replacement schedule from a one-time replacement to replacement every 600 hours.
Probable cause
The failure of the two fuel control unit drive bearings for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence, which resulted in an uncommanded engine acceleration and subsequent overspeed condition. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s improper autorotation, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA312
- Event ID
- 20140624X92949
- Case number
- CEN14LA312
- 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, 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: fd8995b5af61c137000c600d80e6bed79f9e27409e552ee6081605d4eb12a184; retrieved 2026-09-16T00:28:40.171Z.