WPR20LA244 · American Eurocopter AS350 B3
American Eurocopter AS350 B3 · Accident: external load event (Rotorcraft) en route
From Cedar City Regional Airport (CDC) to Pioche, NV
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA244
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
American Eurocopter AS350 B3
- 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
- N755AE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cedar City Regional Airport (CDC), Cedar City, UTTo Pioche, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2013)
- 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
- En route
- 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
- External load event (Rotorcraft)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot landed the helicopter on a mountain ridge to survey a job site. The purpose of the accident flight was to reposition the helicopter from the ridgetop downhill to a fuel truck to refuel before beginning external load operations. A witness reported that he dropped the pilot and passenger at the helicopter before the accident flight and saw a cable that was laid out on the ground in front of the helicopter. The pilot stated to him that the cable was 70 feet long. The witness left the pilot and passenger at the helicopter and drove away; shortly thereafter, he received a phone call about smoke in the vicinity and learned that the helicopter had crashed. Examination of the helicopter revealed that the long line was entangled with the tail rotor, which had separated from the helicopter. The tail cone/vertical fin assembly was found about 365 ft from the main wreckage and exhibited evidence of cable abrasion. Examination of the flight controls and engine, as well as review of recorded engine data, revealed no evidence of mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. Based on the available information, it is likely that the pilot failed to achieve adequate clearance between the long line and terrain before descending downhill toward the fuel truck, which resulted in the helicopter’s long line, becoming entangled with the tail rotor, and a subsequent loss of helicopter control.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain altitude from terrain and subsequent loss of helicopter control due to entanglement of the external load cable with the tail rotor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA244
- Event ID
- 20200729X52602
- Case number
- WPR20LA244
- 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, 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: a4332438b9d4f58b1a9e73b047268fde22078c47e67567880066193a5cc6b0cd; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:17:40.903Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative and the aircraft's make and model, which establish these values: aircraft category. The aircraft is an Airbus Helicopters AS350 B3, and the narrative describes "loss of helicopter control"; the NTSB MDB codes it AIR (Airplane).