ERA17WA207 · MD Helicopter 369 E
Aircraft Asset Finance MD Helicopter 369 E · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Welkom Airport (FAWM) to Christiana Airport (FACK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17WA207
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- 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
MD Helicopter 369 E
- Aircraft type
- MD Helicopters 369
- 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
- ZT-RAC
- Operator
- Aircraft Asset Finance
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Welkom Airport (FAWM), WelkomTo Christiana Airport (FACK), Christiana
- 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
- Non-U.S., Non-Commercial
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On June 14, 2017, about 1045 coordinated universal time, an MD Helicopter 369E, South African registration ZT-RAC, was substantially damaged during a forced landing near Bulfontein, South Africa. The pilot and two passengers were not injured. The personal flight was conducted under South African flight regulations. The South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) Accident and Incident Investigations Division (AIID) is investigating the accident. As the State of Manufacture and Design of the helicopter and engine, the NTSB has appointed a US Accredited Representative under the provisions of ICAO Annex 13 to assist the AIID in its investigation.
All inquiries concerning this accident should be directed to:
South African Civil Aviation Authority Accidents and Incidents Investigation Division Private Bag X 73 Halfway House 1685 South Africa
Website: http://www.caa.co.za
This report is for informational purposes only. All investigative information will be released by the SACAA.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17WA207
- Event ID
- 20170614X23849
- Case number
- ERA17WA207
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 928c144f0f661caf188d9d0d8bdfbbe77de418e5db74d406105be2dd3ce101a0; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:24:41.173Z.