ERA Helicopters Agusta Aerospace Corp AW119 MKII accident
Agusta Aerospace Corp AW119 MKII · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure en route
From Houma Terrebonne Airport (HUM) to Gulf of Mexico, GM
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA156
- 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
Agusta Aerospace Corp AW119 MKII
- Aircraft type
- Agusta Aerospace AW119
- 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
- N802SM
- Operator
- Era Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Houma Terrebonne Airport (HUM), Houma, LATo Gulf of Mexico, GM
- 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
- 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 · 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
- Flight control system 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 propeller/rotor
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting an on-demand air taxi helicopter flight. The pilot reported that, while in cruise flight over water, the helicopter experienced an abrupt, uncommanded left yaw. The pilot returned to the departure airport and performed a run-on landing. A postflight examination of the helicopter revealed that one of the tail rotor pitch change links (PCL) was fractured.
A review of maintenance records revealed that the fractured PCL had recently been overhauled and installed on the helicopter and that it failed 14.8 flight hours since overhaul. Examination of the PCL revealed that it had fractured due to undetected fatigue cracking that appeared to be the result of bending loads caused by stiff bearings. The stiffness was likely the result of the lack of control of the bearing replacement process.
The PCL bearing replacement procedures, which incorporated rotational torque inspection and bearing staking procedures, were contained in the overhaul manual; these procedures were revised about 3 months before the accident, and the overhaul facility used the revised procedures during the replacement of the PCL. Examination of the PCL revealed that both of the bearings exceeded the maximum allowable rotational torque by at least two times the maximum allowed. Based on the findings of this investigation, the PCL manufacturer corrected the figure in the PCL replacement procedures to display the correct method of inspecting spherical bearing rotational torque.
Probable cause
The fracture of the tail rotor pitch change link due to excessive bearing rotational friction, which resulted from the bearings being installed in exceedance of the maximum allowable torque during the last overhaul of the pitch change link.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA156
- Event ID
- 20150225X31336
- Case number
- CEN15LA156
- 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: b14621a55f73196675ce81c3de3985d269e4194bfca4fabdcf58d70465bc7921; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:06:39.040Z.