Center for Emergency Medicine of Western Eurocopter Deutschland Gmbh EC 135 T2 accident
Eurocopter Deutschland Gmbh EC 135 T2 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Monongahela Valley Hospital Heliport (5PA5) to SAP America Heliport (78PA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16CA060
- 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
Eurocopter Deutschland Gmbh EC 135 T2
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter EC-135
- 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
- N639ME
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monongahela Valley Hospital Heliport (5PA5), Monongahela, PATo SAP America Heliport (78PA), NEWTOWN SQUARE, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 8 years (built 2007)
- 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
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After liftoff during a helicopter emergency medical service (HEMS) flight with a patient on board, the pilot of the HEMS helicopter brought it in to a 1 to 2 foot hover and was preparing to make a right pedal turn into the wind, when a cover from a wheeled fire extinguisher, was blown airborne by the main rotor wash and ingested into the tail rotor (fenestron) of the helicopter. The helicopter lost tail rotor authority and began to spin clockwise. The pilot lowered the collective and the helicopter rotated approximately 150 degrees, then impacted the ground and continued to rotate another 20 to 30 degrees, for a total of 170 to180 degree turn, and came to rest. Examination of the helicopter by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector revealed damage to the landing gear skid tubes, fenestron composite housing, and the forward cross tube gimbal which had pushed up into a composite non-structural area of the fuselage. It was discovered, that the wheeled fire extinguisher that the cover had blown off of, had been inspected for serviceability just four days prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The inadequate securing of the wheeled fire extinguisher's cover which resulted in it being blown off of the fire extinguisher and ingested into the helicopter's fenestron during takeoff, resulting in a loss of directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16CA060
- Event ID
- 20151204X43427
- Case number
- ERA16CA060
- 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: 2c41464be73cce712d8179bda46e0babc2fc9a6f99db4daf6d1d8b497ebe6308; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:00:39.450Z.