Rota Aviation Consulting Airbus AS350 B2 accident
Airbus AS350 B2 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Sutton, AK to Sutton, AK
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's aircraft involved. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA19CA139
- 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
Airbus AS350 B2 Narrative disagrees
- Aircraft type
- Airbus 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
- N350ST
- Operator
- Rota Aviation Consulting
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sutton, AKTo Sutton, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 26 years (built 1993)
- 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
- Maneuvering · hover
- 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 control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter pilot reported that, while transporting snow skiers, he landed on a 20º slope below the mountain peak, where he directed the guide and two skiers to unload with the engine running. The pilot saw loose rocks from the peak above fall into the main rotor disk, and after the skiers were clear of the helicopter, he raised the collective and brought the helicopter to a hover. He added that, while hovering, he did not feel any controllability issues, so he repositioned the helicopter up the mountain about 30 ft and "toed in" to unload additional skiers. After the remaining skiers unloaded, the pilot started flying the helicopter down the mountain so that he could shut down the engine and examine the main rotor blades.
The pilot added that, about 10 seconds later, the helicopter began to shake violently. He initiated a forced landing, but about 150 ft above the trees, the "flight controls became progressively hard to control," and the helicopter pitched up. Immediately, he lowered the nose and collective, and about 30 ft above the snow-covered ground, the main rotor disk struck trees, and the helicopter subsequently impacted terrain.
The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the main rotor blades, fuselage, tailboom, and tail rotor blades.
The director of operations reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's selection of unsuitable terrain for landing on snow-covered mountainous terrain with steep rocks above, which resulted in loose rocks damaging the main rotor blades and the subsequent loss of helicopter controllability.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA19CA139
- Event ID
- 20190219X80927
- Case number
- GAA19CA139
- 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: 2c98ec8168e5ada493ec8fc4f58bf1917d43d926e75c13dee3a1ef3a6637bada; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:36:13.629Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: aircraft model. The aircraft is coded Helicopter and the narrative describes a helicopter landing skiers on a ridge and damage to the main rotor blades; the A350 is a twin-engine airliner with no B2 or B3 variant, while the AS350 B2 and B3 are the Airbus Helicopters (Aerospatiale/Eurocopter) Ecureuil variants; the model string lost its S.