WPR18TA239 · Eurocopter EC130 B4
Eurocopter EC130 B4 · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft en route
From Hilo International Airport (ITO) to Hilo International Airport (ITO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18TA239
- 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
Eurocopter EC130 B4
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter EC130
- 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
- N11QP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hilo International Airport (ITO), Hilo, HITo Hilo International Airport (ITO), Hilo, HI
- Aircraft age
- About 9 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 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, before departing, he conducted a walk-around inspection of the helicopter, during which he visually checked to ensure all the doors and cowlings were closed and secured. The pilot departed on the flight with the maintenance apprentice, who was seated in the right front seat. While the flight was en route back to the airport, the left-rear sliding door suddenly slid open, separated from the helicopter, and struck two of the three main rotor blades. The pilot performed a precautionary landing to a field. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to two main rotor blades. The helicopter’s left sliding door tracks and door latch assemblies were normal and unremarkable. The plastic latch on the fuselage which supports the sliding rear door when opened was damaged, and a portion had separated from the fuselage. The sliding door fell into the ocean and was not recovered, thereby preventing examination of the door and its locking components. After the accident, Airbus Helicopters published an alert service bulletin requiring a mandatory spring-scale check on all sliding door-equipped EC-130 B4 helicopters to ensure correct operation of the sliding door locking system.
Probable cause
The separation of the left sliding door in flight after it opened for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence, which resulted in damage to the main rotor blades.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18TA239
- Event ID
- 20180820X12647
- Case number
- WPR18TA239
- 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: bc14238f62c956d9a86021d0f3c5ffc1001c6c95cbc22620d4b5efaed37ec921; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:07:09.145Z.