K & S Helicopters Bell 430 accident
Bell 430 · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft en route
From Wailea, HI to Hilo International Airport (ITO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19LA028
- 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
Bell 430
- Aircraft type
- Bell 430
- 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
- N430ST
- Operator
- K & S Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wailea, HITo Hilo International Airport (ITO), Hilo, HI
- Aircraft age
- About 18 years (built 2000)
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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 propeller/rotor
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the sightseeing helicopter flight reported that he experienced a loud thump immediately followed by vibration and that he chose to conduct a precautionary landing at a nearby airport. Postaccident examination of the tail rotor components revealed that one of the tail rotor blades’ root enclosures, along with its associated weights and attachment bolts, had separated. The other tail rotor blade sustained a 6-inch-long dent about mid-span when the root enclosure separated.
About 200 flight hours before the accident, the subject tail rotor blade was removed from service due to a delamination of the root enclosure at the root block and a repair was made of the blade’s root enclosure area. Scratches were observed on the root block around the edge of one of the tail rotor blades’ root enclosure areas, consistent with surface preparation for the repair. However, while the surface preparation with the scratches created an appropriate bonding surface, the adhesive did not properly bond to the remaining area of the faying surface due to corrosion.
Additionally, no adhesive was applied into the gap between the root enclosure and root block. This action would require the surface in that area to be prepped for the application of the adhesive, and no evidence of such preparation was observed. The surface of the root block to where the enclosure was bonded was corroded with paths of oxidation extending outboard, consistent with trapped moisture between the adhesive and the enclosure, which eventually resulted in the enclosure separating from the root block.
Probable cause
The separation of one of the tail rotors blades’ root enclosures due to improper repair.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19LA028
- Event ID
- 20181102X14655
- Case number
- WPR19LA028
- 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, cause areas. 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: 0fb0bde40c0d52e63d441b44929e1eb63e26849cac3cda673c55a806a5bca7b4; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:24:23.682Z.