ERA19FA163 · Guimbal CABRI G2
Monumental Helicopters Guimbal CABRI G2 · Accident: loss of visual reference while maneuvering
From Fort Meade Executive Airport (FME) to Fort Meade Executive Airport (FME)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19FA163
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Guimbal CABRI G2
- Aircraft type
- Guimbal CABRI
- 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
- N572MD
- Operator
- Monumental Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Meade Executive Airport (FME), Fort Meade(Odenton), MDTo Fort Meade Executive Airport (FME), Fort Meade(Odenton), MD
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2017)
- 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 visual reference
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument-rated pilot and passenger intended to fly the helicopter, which was not equipped for instrument flight, in order to photograph the passenger's family member fishing, despite a forecast of instrument meteorological conditions. The helicopter flew for about 11 minutes, making several left and right turns in the vicinity of where the family member was fishing at an altitude of about 175 ft. The passenger was texting the family member, and at one point asked "Can you see us? We are hitting the wall that we can't fly through." The family member responded, "not really," and the passenger sent one last text message stating, "Give me one more [GPS] pin to try." After the last message, the helicopter began to fly south over water and away from land and any natural horizon.
The wreckage was located in the water about 1.5 miles from the shoreline. Examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical anomaly. Analyses of weather information, witness statements, and photographs taken by the passenger were consistent with conditions of limited visibility and a lack of a visible horizon. In these limited visibility conditions, especially when flying away from shore, the pilot's workload would have increased as he divided his attention between maintaining control of the helicopter and an adequate altitude above the water using poor visual cues and positioning of the helicopter laterally while looking for the fishing vessel. These conditions were conducive to the both the development of spatial disorientation and loss of control, or an inadvertent descent into the water (due to distraction or a visual illusion). The ability of the pilot to detect any loss of control or a trajectory towards the water was significantly reduced as a result of the extremely low altitude in which the flight over water was conducted, the low visibility, the lack of instruments on board to allow for instrument flight, and his lack of instrument training and experience.
Probable cause
The noninstrument-rated pilot's continued visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in an inadvertent descent into the water. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to conduct the flight at a low altitude without sufficient cues to aid in the perception of attitude and altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19FA163
- Event ID
- 20190504X45333
- Case number
- ERA19FA163
- 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: 0cf8325e24f5151bf0d5763190c44c8e2672392617a68a8bd1dafe75147f2b78; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:57:26.773Z.