Air Methods Eurocopter Deutschland Gmbh MBB BK 117 C-2 accident
Eurocopter Deutschland Gmbh MBB BK 117 C-2 · Accident en route
From Grafton City Hospital Heliport (22WV) to West Penn Hospital Heliport (PN80)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA265
- 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 MBB BK 117 C-2
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter MBB BK 117 C-2
- 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
- N145HN
- Operator
- Air Methods
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Grafton City Hospital Heliport (22WV), Grafton, WVTo West Penn Hospital Heliport (PN80), Pittsburgh, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2009)
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 structures
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The accident flight, which was an on-demand air medical flight, was the second flight of the day following maintenance work that had been performed on the helicopter earlier that morning. The commercial pilot reported that the flight was uneventful but that, after landing, he noticed that the left vertical fin cowling had partially separated and contacted a tail rotor blade. Further examination of the helicopter revealed that the right vertical fin cowling remained secured but that 8 of the 11 fasteners on the left vertical fin cowling were unlocked, consistent with maintenance personnel not properly securing them following the maintenance work that was performed earlier that day.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s failure to properly secure the left vertical fin cowling during recent maintenance, which resulted in its separation and subsequent contact with the tail rotor system during flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA265
- Event ID
- 20160723X95223
- Case number
- ERA16LA265
- 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: f8bae0dd10512029d56dec9005c822da7620898b3df85e2741f8734ffc66e552; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:41:26.427Z.