CEN18LA314 · Airbus EC 130 T2
Airbus EC 130 T2 · Accident: loss of tail rotor effectiveness while maneuvering
From Alliance Municipal Airport (KAIA) to Mullen, NE
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA314
- 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
- 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
Airbus EC 130 T2
- Aircraft type
- Airbus EC-130
- 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
- N130TG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Alliance Municipal Airport (KAIA), Alliance, NETo Mullen, NE
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2016)
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 tail rotor effectiveness
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot reported that he was approaching a golf course to survey a potential landing area when, during a left turn, the helicopter experienced a loss of tail rotor effectiveness. He stated that he added right pedal and eventually full right pedal to counter the rotation without success. The helicopter impacted the ground, which resulted in substantial damage to the main rotor and fuselage. Parametric data recovered from an onboard recorder showed that the left turn tightened in radius and that both the groundspeed and airspeed decreased during the turn. The left yaw rate increased rapidly as the helicopter entered the downwind portion of the turn. The cockpit image recorder captured the pilot applying a slight right pedal input during the onset of the left yaw, followed by his improper left pedal input that remained until ground impact. There was no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation. The left yaw would likely have been arrested had the pilot applied adequate and correct antitorque pedal when the yaw first started.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadequate and incorrect antitorque pedal application during a tight, decelerating turn downwind, which resulted in a loss of yaw control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA314
- Event ID
- 20180804X63719
- Case number
- CEN18LA314
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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: 94e0f650e70d46857d042d59a4f14c9682ddcb5faeb4612988a64039b7b6efaa; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:02:59.576Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: departure. Misspelled city name; KAIA is Alliance Municipal Airport, Alliance, NE.