ERA22LA209 · Garlick Helicopters Inc OH-58A+
Coastal Air Service Garlick Helicopters Inc OH-58A+ · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA209
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Garlick Helicopters Inc OH-58A+
- Aircraft type
- Garlick OH-58
- 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
- N281SP
- Operator
- Coastal Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1973)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the helicopter was performing aerial application operations and had sprayed one load early that morning, then returned for his second load. While on the ground, operations were halted because another company helicopter had crashed into the water they were conducting operations over. Following that accident, a safety briefing was held with the pilots, and they were instructed to maintain constant communications with the loader truck. They resumed spray operations and later that afternoon the pilot noted that it was difficult to judge his height above the water and advised another company pilot via radio of that fact. He further described that the water was “like a mirror,” which hampered his depth perception. Later that evening, during a final application pass while he was looking down at the GPS, the helicopter impacted the water. The helicopter’s fuselage, main, and tail rotor blades were substantially damaged during the impact. Following the accident the pilot indicated that there were no mechanical deficiencies of the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to continue the low-altitude aerial application flight over water conditions that degraded his depth perception, which resulted in an inadvertent collision with the water.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA209
- Event ID
- 20220427105009
- Case number
- ERA22LA209
- 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, coordinates, 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: f8fdcc1a3c48d4a9db608ac2f714fb282d774da9b252e805d52e02f843d8660e; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:10:50.534Z.