WPR23LA339 · Eurocopter France AS350B2
Eurocopter France AS350B2 · Accident: loss of visual reference while maneuvering
From Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA339
- 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
Eurocopter France AS350B2
- 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
- N350WW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO), Arlington, WATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 34 years (built 1989)
- 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 · 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
- Loss of visual reference
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was landing the helicopter on the shoreline of a lake, during low light, dusk conditions. During the approach to the shoreline, he began maneuvering to slow the helicopter down and descend over the open water and that his attention was fully outside of the helicopter, when he saw a light from the intended landing zone get brighter, and the area around the helicopter suddenly got darker. The helicopter subsequently struck the surface of the lake, rolled inverted, and sank in about 80 ft. of water. The pilot and the passengers exited the helicopter and were rescued by a good Samaritan before it sank. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the main rotor drive system and tail boom assembly. The pilot reported that there are no mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain visual reference and altitude while maneuvering over a lake during dusk conditions, which resulted in the helicopter impacting water.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA339
- Event ID
- 20230912193047
- Case number
- WPR23LA339
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2023-09-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d896bbbb37216aa53188f0d0469c7abec662ab9bda79b539fd17a97be59b2c58; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:06:49.453Z.