ERA18LA170 · Bell OH 58A
North Carolina State Highway Patrol Bell OH 58A · Accident: dynamic rollover during takeoff
From Garner Road Heliport (3NC2) to Garner Road Heliport (3NC2)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA170
- 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
- 0
- 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
- Government
- 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
Bell OH 58A
- Aircraft type
- Bell OH-58
- 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
- N303HP
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Garner Road Heliport (3NC2), Raleigh, NCTo Garner Road Heliport (3NC2), Raleigh, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 48 years (built 1970)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Dynamic rollover
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
In preparation for a local flight, the commercial pilot moved the helicopter from the hangar to the helipad on an electric transporter that was attached to the helicopter skids. During the pilot's preflight preparation, shortly after he had unhooked the left skid from the transporter, the passenger interrupted him to ask if the flight controls could be removed from the copilot's side. After removing the controls, the pilot continued with his preflight inspection; however, he forgot to unhook the right skid from the transporter. Subsequently, during the takeoff, the helicopter rolled right until the main rotor blades struck the ground. The pilot's failure to unhook the transporter from the right skid led to the subsequent dynamic rollover.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight inspection, during which he failed to detach ground handling equipment from the helicopter before initiating the takeoff, which resulted in the subsequent dynamic rollover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA170
- Event ID
- 20180619X55640
- Case number
- ERA18LA170
- 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: a3804be878828d8e601d668a62c9f61cd080b4eff4da684d5e85df328f38c139; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:35:03.525Z.