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Netcare Helicopter Bell 430 accident

21 Jan 2021 · Ladysmith Kwa Zulu Natal Province., South Africa

Bell 430 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route

From Ultimate Heli heliport, Midrand, Gauteng to Hillcrest Hospital, Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal

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Event

NTSB case
WPR21WA091
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
Final · SACAA final report, 18 Feb 2022 
API-reported fatalities
5 · all aircraft and ground
Ground fatalities
0
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
Not recorded

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
ZT-RRT
Onboard fatalities
Unknown
Route
From Ultimate Heli heliport, Midrand, GautengTo Hillcrest Hospital, Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal
Aircraft age
Not recorded
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
Non-U.S., Commercial
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
Loss of control in flight
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

No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.

Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.

NTSB narrative

Investigated by the authorities of South Africa; the NTSB took part and publishes no narrative.

Sources

NTSB record WPR21WA091
Event ID
20210121102541
Case number
WPR21WA091
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: coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
  • The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
  • API snapshot SHA-256: b504883326762c64b2717c6b665aab1305f813f00bde63ac7fb29aaee0f2820f; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:24:41.499Z.
  • Checked against the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA), Accident and Incident Investigations Division (AIID) final report (2022-02-18) on 2026-09-18. The report states the same date, fatalities, registration and damage. Taken from the report: ground fatalities, departure and destination. Shown unchanged where the report gives another value or wording: operator (shown Netcare Helicopter; report National Airways Corporation (Pty) Ltd). Not checked: place, crash-site coordinates, flight number, aircraft type and type of operation.