WPR22LA261 · Aerospatiale SA342J
Extreme Dynamic Aerospatiale SA342J · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Cedar City Regional Airport (KCDC) to Escalante Municipal Airport (1L7)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR22LA261
- 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
Aerospatiale SA342J
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale SA342
- 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
- N342WF
- Operator
- Extreme Dynamic
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cedar City Regional Airport (KCDC), Cedar City, UTTo Escalante Municipal Airport (1L7), Escalante, UT
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1976)
- 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 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Task performance
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 reported that, he was transporting supplies to a remote landing site and had made multiple approaches and landings. He stated that on the final approach, cloud cover had cleared and the helicopter “felt heavy.” About 25-30 ft above the ground the helicopter began to sink and he could not recover. The helicopter hit hard and tipped forward onto its nose during landing, substantially damaging the airframe and main rotors. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident malfunctions or failures with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to control the helicopter’s descent rate during landing, which resulted in collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR22LA261
- Event ID
- 20220720105532
- Case number
- WPR22LA261
- 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: 61d71a6924aa8ea196de3e509d53e683dda06468da9a7edced749e38293bb9cf; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:29:09.594Z.