ASN Wikibase Occurrence # 151321
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| Date: | Friday 3 January 2003 |
| Time: | 13:35 UTC |
| Type: |  Eurocopter AS 365N2 Dauphin 2 |
| Owner/operator: | Aero Contractors |
| Registration: | 5N-BBS |
| MSN: | 6448 |
| Year of manufacture: | 1993 |
| Fatalities: | Fatalities: 4 / Occupants: 12 |
| Aircraft damage: | Destroyed |
| Category: | Accident |
| Location: | off Brass oil terminal -
 Nigeria
|
| Phase: | En route |
| Nature: | Offshore |
| Departure airport: | Brass Terminal |
| Agip Port Harcourt Base | |
| Investigating agency: | AIB Nigeria |
| Confidence Rating: |  Accident investigation report completed and information captured |
Crashed at sea while on charter to Agip.
According to one source (an AIBN report): The helicopter was in the enroute phase when the emergency floats inflated unintentionally. The helicopter began to rotate around the rotor mast during the subsequent landing. Finding of fatigue fracture in tail rotor blade no. 35317. The blade fracture was not related directly to the problems with the emergency floats. Alert Service Bulletin No. 05.00.17 issued by Eurocopter on 16 April 2003 introduced operating time limits and more intensive maintenance. This was later followed up by DGAC Airworthiness Directive No. T2003-155 dated 30 April 2003.
3.2.0 The Probable cause of accident.
3.2.1 The probable cause of the accident is due to the fatigue of one of the tail rotor blades, which caused severe damage to the other blades arid loss of efficiency of the tail rotor on the final approach and consequently caused the loss of control of the helicopter to safe landing by the crew.
3.2.2 The first contributive factor to the accident is the incident of the floats' inflation, which was inadvertently activated by the crew. The float activation also caused the CVR to stop functioning. (Please see BEA's disagreement on page 117)
3.2.3 The second contributive factor is the decision of the commander to continue with the mission and not to immediately ditch the helicopter with a serious controllability problem affecting emergency after the undesirable deployment of the floatation gear.
(Please see BEA's disagreement on page 118)
Accident investigation:
 |
|
Sources:
http://allafrica.com/stories/200301040203.html
https://www.helis.com/database/accidents/?model=539
https://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/77014-fatal-helicopter-crash-nigeria.html
https://www.easa.europa.eu/system/files/dfu/NPA%202016-01.pdf (see section 7)
https://www.aibn.no/luftfart/rapporter/2009-27-eng (see page 14)
https://aib.gov.ng/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/REPORT-NO.FMA-AIPB-394.pdf
Revision history:
| Date/time | Contributor | Updates |
|---|---|---|
| 19-Dec-2012 09:43 | TB | Added |
| 17-Apr-2016 13:22 | Aerossurance | Updated [Total fatalities, Total occupants, Phase, Nature, Source, Narrative] |
| 17-Apr-2016 13:35 | Aerossurance | Updated [Source, Narrative] |
| 24-May-2021 07:49 | KagurazakaHanayo | Updated [Time, Departure airport, Destination airport, Source, Narrative] |
| 24-May-2021 07:52 | harro | Updated [Narrative, Accident report] |
| 24-May-2021 08:14 | harro | Updated [Source] |
Corrections or additions? ... Edit this accident description
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