Reach Air Medical Services Airbus Helicopters EC 130 T2 accident
Airbus Helicopters EC 130 T2 · Accident during initial climb
From 3CLO · Sacramento, CA to McClellan Airfield (MCC)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR26FA008
- 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
- Ongoing
- API-reported fatalities
- 1 · 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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
Airbus Helicopters EC 130 T2
- Aircraft type
- Airbus EC-130
- 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
- N414RX
- Operator
- Reach Air Medical Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3CLO · Sacramento, CATo McClellan Airfield (MCC), Sacramento, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2021)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On October 6, 2025, about 1905 Pacific daylight time, an Airbus Helicopters EC-130 T2, N414RX, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident in Sacramento, California. The pilot and flight paramedic sustained serious injuries; the flight nurse succumbed to her injuries 4 days after the accident. The helicopter was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 135 air medical flight. The helicopter departed UC Davis Medical Center Tower II Heliport (3CLO), Sacramento, California, with a planned destination of Mc Clellan Airfield (MCC), Sacramento, California. The flight paramedic reported that shortly after takeoff she noticed the power had gone out and the helicopter was autorotating towards U.S. Route 50. She made a mayday call on the company radio frequency. Subsequently, the helicopter came to rest on its left side in the eastbound lanes of U.S. Route 50, about 1,600 ft north of 3CLO. A main rotor blade ground impression was observed on the residential side of the fence that enclosed the highway. Furthermore, a section of the outer portion of the main rotor blade was discovered embedded in the roof of a detached garage on a residential home located next to the highway. A review of ADS-B data revealed that the total accident flight was about 26 seconds. The data showed the helicopter departed the helipad and climb to a maximum altitude of about 500 ft mean sea level. Shortly thereafter, the helicopter was in descent for the final 11 seconds of the flight. Postaccident examination revealed that the helicopter’s fuselage and main rotor blades sustained substantial damage. The helicopter was recovered and retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR26FA008
- Event ID
- 20251007201802
- Case number
- WPR26FA008
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2025-10-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 68b6230d26e0bfe2d8bae50ac0bd2a3423adb5eab523c689a38afc7c42d69ade; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:09:49.532Z.