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Accident investigation report completed and information captured
Narrative: The helicopter crashed while supporting a salvage operation. Two crew members died from the injuries sustained. The three other POB were seriously injured. Video shows the aircraft in the hover at c100ft before yawing rapidly, turning through 360 degrees several times and impacting the sea. The helicopter was dispatched to take an engineer and two Coast Guard (CGA-SSC) specialists to a Taiwan-registered 13,500-ton freighter, that ran aground 10 March 2016 about 300 meters off the coast, to see how much oil had been leaked by the ship. All 21 of the freighter's crew members were earlier airlifted to safety after they abandoned ship.
The GPS system indicated that the aircraft began yawing towards the left at 1317:44. Before the aircraft yawed towards the left, the pilot said, "mission abort, mission abort". Four seconds later (1317:48), the aircraft began to turn drastically. According to the copilot's interview, the aircraft was shaking in all directions as the aircraft drastically spun towards the left. The copilot also heard the pilot saying, "What is happening to the aircraft?" As the spinning speed of the aircraft accelerates, the CGA-SSC member performing the hoisting mission was thrown up by the great centrifugal force generated by the spinning motions and aircraft altitude changed. After the CGA-SSC member impacted the main rotor and crashing into the sea, the aircraft plummeted on the sea surface to the left of the cargo ship at 1317:59 with a right roll in an easterly direction.
Findings related to probable causes: The available evidence indicated that maintenance performed the tail gear box control rod bearing inspection through the periodic check in accordance with the Alert Service Bulletin AS365-05.00.61R4 and all successive measurements were within the criteria. The maintenance personnel did not detect the bearing was worn, the tactile/sensitive manual axial play check is mainly based on the judgment of the operator and therefore subjective to detect manually. The bearing wear continued, which spalled off the inner ring shoulder, completely detached the outer ring, and eventually led to the malfunction of pitch control in the tail rotor bearing. Due to the failure of the tail rotor pitch function, the pilot could not control the flight direction. Flying at a low altitude and driven by large horsepower, the main rotor was damaged from impact. The pilot could no longer perform relevant emergency procedures according to the flight manual and eventually lost control and crashed into the sea.