Airbus AS350 / H125 Helicopter Accidents: What Passengers and Families Should Know

Why the Type of AS350 Flight Shapes Your Questions

The AS350 is a single-engine turbine helicopter. The NTSB's own reports list it under two makers' names, Eurocopter and Airbus Helicopters, depending on the aircraft. People searching for an Airbus H125 crash are usually looking for the same family of records, and the NTSB files those listed below under the AS350 designation.

The NTSB reports supplied here describe several variants: the AS350 B2, the AS350 B3 and the AS350B3e. They record the type in the "Helicopter" category, with skid landing gear and one turboshaft engine. Seating ranges from five seats to seven, and the years of manufacture listed run from 2005 to 2023.

The same records show how varied the work is: a flight with a flight instructor supervising a pilot receiving instruction, a helicopter slinging construction equipment to a remote mine site, and a helicopter operated by a county sheriff's office as a public aircraft. Whether you were a passenger on a tour, a patient on a medical flight, a worker on a job site or a student pilot, your experience may sit on the same aircraft family.

That matters because the kind of flight shapes the rules that governed it. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the federal agency that certifies pilots, operators and aircraft, applies different operating rules to different kinds of flying. A charter or air-taxi flight carrying paying passengers is held to a different set of operating rules than a private flight. Two accidents on the same helicopter type can therefore raise quite different legal questions, and what kind of flight it was, and who operated it, shape much of what follows.

This page describes the aircraft type only. It does not describe how any manufacturer or operator designs, builds, flies or maintains helicopters in practice, and nothing here suggests that any company was responsible for any accident.

What an NTSB Investigation Means for You After an AS350 Accident

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is, in its own words on each report, "an independent federal agency charged by Congress with investigating every civil aviation accident in the United States." It also says it determines "the probable causes of the accidents and events we investigate," issues safety recommendations, and offers "information and other assistance to family members and survivors."

An investigation usually produces a sequence of documents. A preliminary report is an early, factual summary released while the investigation is still open; it is not a finding about why the accident happened. A final report closes the investigation. The probable cause is the NTSB's own statement, in its final report, of what it determined led to the accident. While an investigation is open, no probable cause has been stated, and no one can fairly say what the NTSB will conclude.

The NTSB is explicit that its work is not a fault-finding exercise. Each report supplied here says that "the NTSB does not assign fault or blame for an accident or incident," and quotes its regulation that investigations "are fact-finding proceedings with no formal issues and no adverse parties … and are not conducted for the purpose of determining the rights or liabilities of any person."

Federal law draws the same line. Under 49 U.S.C. § 1154(b):

"No part of a report of the Board, related to an accident or an investigation of an accident, may be admitted into evidence or used in a civil action for damages resulting from a matter mentioned in the report."

For a family or an injured passenger, that rule cuts both ways. A probable cause that seems to point toward someone does not, by itself, prove anything in a lawsuit, and one that seems to point away from someone does not end the inquiry either. Each NTSB report also notes that "a factual report that may be admissible under 49 United States Code section 1154(b)" is available, so the factual record and the conclusions are treated differently. The same section separately limits how cockpit and surface vehicle recordings and transcripts can be obtained in court, generally allowing discovery only where a court decides, after a private review, that it is needed for a fair trial.

When reading a report about your own accident, it can help to note whether it is preliminary or final, and to keep the factual material separate from the probable-cause conclusion.

Is There an NTSB Record for Your AS350 Accident? Five Recent Examples

The five records below are the site's own selection from the NTSB's aviation accident dataset, newest first. They are not an NTSB statistic and say nothing about how often this aircraft type is involved in accidents. Each is a final report, and the NTSB's dataset carried a probable-cause statement for each as of October 17, 2026. In each, the highest injury the NTSB recorded was "None."

ERA26LA026 — October 22, 2025, Wetumpka, Alabama. Eurocopter AS350 (model AS350 B3); substantial damage; defining event "hard landing." The NTSB final report for ERA26LA026 states the probable cause as "the pilot's improper recovery from a practice autorotation, which resulted in a hard landing. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the pilot receiving instruction."

ANC25LA092 — August 22, 2025, Juneau, Alaska. Eurocopter AS 350 B2; substantial damage; defining event "tailstrike." The NTSB final report for ANC25LA092 states the probable cause as "the pilot's failure to maintain adequate obstacle clearance during takeoff from uneven, snow-covered terrain in flat light conditions."

ANC25LA097 — August 20, 2025, Skwentna, Alaska. Airbus Helicopters AS350B3e; substantial damage. The NTSB final report for ANC25LA097 describes an external-load operation to a mine site and states the probable cause as "the pilot's inadvertent entanglement of a lightweight Kevlar long line into the helicopters operating main rotor system, resulting in a severe imbalance and separation of the main rotor gearbox."

ERA24LA287 — June 27, 2024, Sanford, Florida. Airbus Helicopters AS350 (model AS350 B3); substantial damage; defining event "settling with power/vortex ring state." The NTSB final report for ERA24LA287 states the probable cause as "the helicopter pilot's improper maneuvering at low altitude in gusty wind conditions, which resulted in the helicopter entering a vortex ring state, and hard landing during a subsequent autorotation."

ERA24LA205 — May 1, 2024, Plant City, Florida. Airbus Helicopters AS350B3e, operated as a public aircraft; substantial damage. The NTSB final report for ERA24LA205 states the probable cause as "the pilot's inadequate yaw control of the helicopter while maneuvering at a low altitude and airspeed, which resulted in a hard landing."

Each accident number leads to the NTSB's own final report and its docket, which is where the official factual record begins. If the accident you are thinking about is not here, that does not mean it has no record; this short list is a sample, not a complete history. Searching the NTSB's site by date, location or registration is one way to check whether a report exists. The same record format appears on the site's pages about Robinson R66 helicopter accidents and Pilatus PC-12 accidents.

What Shapes an AS350 Accident Investigation — and Why It Matters to You

Three separate tracks can follow a helicopter accident, and keeping them apart helps make sense of the paperwork that arrives. The NTSB runs the safety investigation. The FAA, as the regulator, has its own role over certificates, and the NTSB notes that it hears appeals of FAA certificate enforcement actions. A civil claim for injury or death is a third track, decided under state law in a court, and it does not wait on the NTSB's permission or its conclusions.

The reports show the kinds of facts that may later matter: the pilot's total flight hours and recent flying, the date of the last flight review, the aircraft's year of manufacture and certified maximum weight, the weather, the departure point and destination, and the date and type of the last inspection. Several note that "the NTSB did not travel to the scene of this accident," and each lists an investigation docket, the public file of underlying material.

Not everything relevant sits in that docket. Flight and pilot records, maintenance logs, the operator's certificates, air traffic control communications and any cockpit recorder data, where an aircraft carried a recorder, may be held by the operator or a maintenance provider instead. Knowing which material is public and which is held by others is often part of understanding the timeline, because material outside the docket does not arrive on its own.

An NTSB final report answers a safety question, not a legal one. The legal questions turn on facts that a court tests on its own record, under the rules of the state whose law applies.

How State Law Frames a Claim After an AS350 Crash

Federal aviation law and state injury law do different jobs. FAA regulations set the standards for certifying pilots and operators and for keeping aircraft airworthy (fit to fly safely) and maintained. Whether you or your family have a civil claim for injury or death is, in most cases, a question of state law.

Three state-law ideas come up most often, and each points to a different question about what happened on your flight. If the concern is how the helicopter was flown, operated or maintained, a negligence claim looks at whether someone owed you a duty of care, whether they breached it, whether that breach caused your harm, and what damages resulted. If the concern is the helicopter or one of its parts, a product-liability claim looks at whether the product had a defect and whether that defect caused the harm. If someone died, wrongful death is a claim state law gives to certain survivors; who may bring it, and what it may cover, is set by each state's statute. An accident alone proves none of these. Whether any element is met depends on the facts.

The rules differ from state to state. Limitation periods, the deadlines for filing a claim, differ in length, in when they begin to run and in their exceptions. Some states reduce what an injured person may recover by their share of fault, and others treat that share differently. The categories of damages the law may allow, such as medical expenses, lost earnings and pain and suffering, also vary. Which state's law applies can depend on where the accident happened and on other connections to the case. The site's page on Texas aviation accident claims shows how one state's own statutes set these rules.

The same accident can look different depending on the state and the type of flight: a paying charter passenger, a worker aboard a utility flight and a student in a training flight may each stand in a different place. The site's broader guide to aviation accident claims explains how the federal and state layers relate.

Questions Worth Asking Before Moving Forward After an AS350 Accident

Where things stand often depends on a few plain questions. Is the NTSB investigation open, or has a final report issued? What kind of flight was it, and who was operating it? Where did the accident happen? What is known about the aircraft's maintenance and inspection status? Which records exist, and who holds them?

Beyond the operator and docket records described above, the material closest to hand for an injured person usually includes medical records, any photographs, the names of people who were aboard or nearby, and anything received from the operator. Families after a death often gather the same kinds of material along with documents about the person who died.

Deadlines deserve particular care. Limitation periods are set by state law, run from different starting points depending on the state, and many have exceptions. This page cannot say how much time applies to any particular accident or whether a period has run, because that turns on the state and on the facts.

These are the kinds of questions a conversation with our attorney can cover: what the investigation's status means, which records exist, and which state's rules may matter for an AS350 accident. If you would like to talk it through, you can request a case evaluation.

Some families are not ready for that conversation yet, and reading the NTSB's own reports first is a reasonable place to start understanding what happened. Similar records appear on the site's page on Cessna 208 Caravan accidents.