Trans Aero Eurocopter AS350 B2 accident
Eurocopter AS350 B2 · Accident: hard landing
From Artesia Municipal Airport (ATS) to El Paso, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA571
- 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 AS350 B2
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter AS350
- 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
- N894NA
- Operator
- Trans Aero
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Artesia Municipal Airport (ATS), Artesia, NMTo El Paso, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 22 years (built 1996)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 helicopter pilot was conducting an emergency medical services flight. He reported that, while en route to a ski resort to pick up a patient, he decided to conduct an eastbound reconnaissance over the landing site to scan for obstacles. He saw two cables in front and below the helicopter 's flightpath and initiated a go-around. He added power to clear the cables, and once the tail cleared the cables, he lowered the collective due to a slight drop in the main rotor speed. As he continued the go-around, he initiated a 180º left turn to attempt an approach to the landing site. During the westward approach and while the helicopter was about 20 ft above ground level, he raised the collective to reduce the descent rate, and the main rotor speed subsequently decayed. He felt that, due to the "faster than normal" descent rate, he would not be able to cushion the landing. Before touchdown, a medical crewmember spotted an elevated steel barrier cable below the helicopter, and the pilot made a 90º left turn to avoid a tail rotor strike. The helicopter subsequently touched down hard, bounced, rotated about 180º counterclockwise over the barrier cable, slid down an embankment, and came to rest upright.
The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and vertical stabilizer.
The director of operations reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
The pilot reported that, during his preflight preparation, he did not calculate the hover-in-ground-effect value, the hover out-of-ground-effect value, or the density altitude for the designated landing site. He added that the accident flight was his second flight in a high-altitude, mountainous environment and that most of his flight hours were accumulated at sea level. He was not aware that the ski resort provided an approach, landing, and takeoff procedure. He added that he should have completed the go-around and circled back around to land.
A Federal Aviation Administration inspector reported that, at the time of the accident, the density altitude for the landing site at 9,793 ft was over 12,000 ft.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain the proper descent rate during landing. Contributing to the accident were the pilot’s failure to conduct preflight performance calculations, which resulted in his operating the helicopter in high-density altitude conditions, and his lack of experience in high-altitude, mountainous flying.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA571
- Event ID
- 20181001X50042
- Case number
- GAA18CA571
- 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: dffbdd3bd9db7473ef8dafa19b9811f3b880b88e279058cf3a7051651bf6bd99; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:17:21.114Z.