ERA20CA135 · AugustaWestland AW119MKII
AugustaWestland AW119MKII · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft on approach
From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE) to Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20CA135
- 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
AugustaWestland AW119MKII
- Aircraft type
- Augustawestland AW119
- 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
- N982SS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), Philadelphia, PATo Northeast Philadelphia Airport (PNE), Philadelphia, PA
- Aircraft age
- Built the same year (2020)
- 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
- Approach
- 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 power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and the flight test engineer were completing a production test flight of the helicopter. A review of a surveillance video showed that, as they were preparing to land, the lower section of the left side of the engine cowling folded back and struck all four main rotor blades, which resulted in substantial damage to the blades. According to the operator/manufacturer, postaccident examination of the helicopter revealed that none of the fasteners on the left side of the cowling remained attached and that three of the fasteners were missing. No evidence of any preaccident discrepancies with the fasteners, the cowling, or the design and conformity of the helicopter structure was found.
According to the manufacturer/operator, before the flight, the pilot reported to maintenance personnel that he had seen that the fasteners attaching the generator duct to the right side of the same cowling appeared long. Maintenance personnel then removed the one-piece engine cowling, and a mechanic then replaced the generator duct fasteners and reinstalled the cowling with the help of another mechanic. The mechanic said he specifically fastened each of the fasteners on the cowling himself and checked all the fasteners after the cowling was reinstalled. Once the cowling was reinstalled, a quality inspector visually inspected the engine cowling fasteners. He did not see any anomalies and signed off that the work had been completed. The flight test engineer performed another preflight inspection of the helicopter and did not note any issues with any of the cowling fasteners. It is likely that the mechanic did not properly install the cowling fasteners before the flight, which resulted in the cowling coming loose and striking the main rotor blades.
Probable cause
The in-flight failure of the lower left side of the engine cowling due to the mechanic’s improper installation of the fasteners, which resulted in the cowling impacting all four main rotor blades.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20CA135
- Event ID
- 20200322X70803
- Case number
- ERA20CA135
- 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: bb91bc600c04df31bd5a8ff45287edd7ecbb4741eeee5290d5ce466be6159e37; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:21:12.141Z.