Inadequate Inspections Left Engine Damage Unnoticed

On August 27, The National Transportation Safety Board reported that the FAA was partly to blame for a West Virginian military helicopter crash. The accident, caused by an engine failure, killed all six people on board.

A Bell UH-1B “Huey” helicopter went down on June 22, 2022, in Amherstdale, West Virginia.  The engine had lost power due to the failure of one of its components. Then, during an attempted emergency landing, the rotorcraft reportedly ran into power lines.

The helicopter’s operator, MARPAT Aviation, was sponsoring the annual “Huey Reunion” at the time. The event at Logan County Airport offered members the (paid) chance to fly in the former military helicopter with a safety pilot. For a smaller price, others could choose to take a ride. The accident occurred on the reunion’s last scheduled flight day.

NTSB investigators stated that the helicopter operator, MARPAT Aviation, should have noticed fatigue cracks and other engine damage in inspections. The FAA apparently provided “basically no oversight” of the operator, allowing them to uphold their experimental airworthiness certificate without routine inspector surveillance.

In December 2014, the FAA issued the Huey a special airworthiness “experimental exhibition” certification. Previously, MARPAT Aviation was forced to operate under more comprehensive inspection and maintenance standards. This was due to their more restricted certificate, which was issued in October 2013.

The NTSB believes that the FAA’s requirements were, at the time, not sufficient enough to guarantee airworthiness of the aircraft. The FAA revised inspection requirements of retired military aircraft in February 2015; however, since their airworthiness certification was issued before the update, the operator was not required to change their standards. This led to the NTSB recommending that other experimental exhibition aircraft be forced to maintain the most recently published inspection requirements. These were last revised in July 2017.

Although there was no legal requirement, the NTSB confirmed that MARPAT Aviation should have known to “use more rigorous inspection standards when the helicopter was operated under an experimental category certificate.” They believe this “was also a factor that led to the accident.”

So, despite MARPAT being partly to blame, the NTSB has suggested six new safety procedures for the FAA use going forward.

FMI: www.ntsb.gov