Helicopter Crash Lawyer

Key Takeaways

A helicopter crash claim sits where two bodies of law meet. Federal aviation regulation, issued by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), sets the rules the operator, the pilot and the maintenance providers had to follow. State tort law, the law of civil wrongs, governs most lawsuits for injury and death that follow a crash.

The points that tend to shape these cases:

• The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the independent federal agency that investigates civil aviation accidents, typically issues a preliminary report early and a final report with a probable cause later. Only the final report states the agency's conclusion about why the accident happened.
• Under 49 U.S.C. § 1154, no part of an NTSB report related to an accident or its investigation may be admitted into evidence or used in a civil action for damages resulting from a matter mentioned in the report. A civil case has to be proven with its own evidence.
• Limitation periods, meaning the time allowed to file a civil lawsuit, are set by state law and differ from state to state. No single national deadline applies.
• Fault rules, wrongful-death rules and damages rules also differ by state, so where the accident happened can matter as much as how it happened.
• The type of flight matters. A sightseeing tour, an air ambulance transport, a charter and a private flight can each fall under different federal operating rules and involve different potential defendants.

For an injured person or a family, this means the questions that matter most, such as which state's law applies, how long that state allows and who may share responsibility, are answered by the facts of the particular crash rather than by a general rule. If you are waiting on the NTSB, it also means its eventual report will not decide a civil claim either way. Those are the questions a conversation with a helicopter crash attorney can help a person sort out.

What Kind of Flight You Were On Shapes the Whole Case

Helicopters fly in very different kinds of operations, and the kind of operation shapes the rest of a case. The operations that most often come up include:

• Sightseeing and tour flights, where paying passengers board for a scenic flight.
• Air ambulance (air medical) flights carrying patients, often with a flight nurse or paramedic aboard.
• Charter flights, where a company flies passengers or cargo for hire on demand.
• Offshore transport, such as flights carrying workers to and from oil platforms.
• Private flights, where an owner or pilot flies for personal or business reasons rather than for hire.
• Flight-school and training flights, with a student, an instructor or both aboard.

Two terms come up again and again. An air carrier is, in plain words, a company that carries passengers or cargo by air for compensation. A charter (Part 135) operator is a company certificated to fly on-demand or commuter flights for hire under Part 135 of the FAA's rules, the set of regulations that covers much of commercial helicopter flying, including many tour, charter and air medical operations. A private flight is generally flown under the FAA's general operating rules in Part 91 instead. Which part governed a given flight depends on what the flight was and who operated it. The site's guide to Part 91 and Part 135 flights explains the difference in more depth for airplanes.

Beyond the kind of operation, the facts that usually matter include the injured person's relationship to the flight (a paying passenger, a patient, a crew member, a worker being transported, or someone on the ground), where and when the accident happened, what was occurring at the time (takeoff, cruise, landing, a hover), and what the official record shows so far. These are starting facts, not pass-or-fail tests. A crew member's situation, for example, may also involve workplace-injury rules that this page does not cover.

For you, the kind of flight can determine which operating rules the operator had to follow and which companies may be part of the case. If you are trying to work out which category your flight falls into, the booking confirmation, the operator's name on a ticket or invoice, or a hospital's transport paperwork often answers the first question, and a conversation with an attorney can go through what those documents show.

How Helicopter Accidents Happen — and Why the NTSB Report Cannot Win a Case on Its Own

Helicopter accidents are generally traced to a few recognized categories of cause, often more than one at once:

• Mechanical failure of an engine, rotor system, transmission or control component.
• Maintenance error, such as an inspection missed or a part installed incorrectly.
• Pilot error, meaning a decision or handling mistake by the person flying.
• Design or manufacturing defects in the helicopter or one of its parts.
• Air traffic control errors in instructions or information given to the pilot.
• Weather and environmental factors, such as low visibility, wind or terrain.

These categories describe how accidents of this kind can happen in general. They say nothing about any particular crash, and a crash by itself does not prove a defect or anyone's carelessness.

The cause matters because it points to the legal theory and to who may be responsible. A maintenance mistake tends to raise a negligence question about the company that did the work. A defect raises a product liability question: in plain words, a claim that a product was defective in its design, its manufacture or its warnings, and that the defect caused the harm. Where someone died, those same theories can support a wrongful-death claim.

Official findings about cause come from the NTSB, which describes its work on its aviation investigations page. A preliminary report is an early factual account, such as the date, place, aircraft and what investigators observed, and it is not a finding of cause. A probable cause is the NTSB's stated determination of why the accident happened, and it appears in the final report. While an investigation is open, the cause has not been officially determined. The site's pages on Robinson R44 accidents, Bell 206 accidents and Airbus AS350 accidents show what those reports look like at each stage.

There is a further rule families are often surprised by. 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." Even a final probable cause cannot carry a civil case. Cause is often contested, and independent engineers and aviation analysts typically examine the wreckage, maintenance records and flight data to build the evidence a court will actually hear.

Who May Be Responsible for Your Injuries

Many families reasonably wonder whether the company that flew the helicopter is the only party involved. Often it is not. The types of parties who may be named in a helicopter crash case include:

• The operator that conducted the flight and employed or engaged the pilot.
• The owner of the helicopter, where the owner is a different person or company from the operator.
• The manufacturer of the helicopter, or of a component such as an engine or rotor part.
• A maintenance company that inspected, repaired or overhauled the aircraft.
• A seller or distributor of a part alleged to be defective.
• An air traffic control authority, where its instructions or information are at issue.

Which of these matter in a given case depends on what happened and what the evidence shows about each one's role.

Three legal theories usually frame these claims. Negligence means, in plain words, that a party owed a duty of care, breached that duty, and that the breach caused the harm, producing damages; all four parts have to be shown. Product liability, described above, focuses on a defect in the product itself. Wrongful death is a claim brought after someone dies as a result of another's wrongful conduct or a defective product, usually by family members or the estate as the state's law allows. The site's page on aviation wrongful death claims covers that claim in detail.

The FAA writes and enforces the safety rules, but whether a party is civilly responsible to an injured person or a family is a separate question, generally decided under state law in a civil court.

Several defendants may be named in one case, and where more than one bears some responsibility, fault may be divided among them under the rules of the state whose law applies. If you are focused only on the operator, this means other companies tied to the aircraft may also have a part in the case, which can affect who is involved and how responsibility is shared. A conversation with our attorney can cover which kinds of parties were involved in the flight and what is known so far about each one's part.

The Records That Can Make or Break a Claim

Records that often matter in a helicopter crash case include:

• The wreckage and its individual components.
• Maintenance logs, inspection records and airworthiness records.
• Flight data and cockpit voice or video recordings, where the aircraft carried a recorder.
• NTSB investigation records.
• Air traffic control communications.
• Weather data for the time and place of the flight.
• The operator's certificates and the pilot's training records.
• Witness accounts, photos and video from people on the ground or aboard.

Physical evidence can be moved, altered or lost after an accident, and much of this material is not in the family's hands. Maintenance records, certificates and training records are often held by the operator or by the FAA, and in litigation they may be obtained through legal process such as discovery, the court-supervised exchange of evidence.

Recordings follow their own federal rule. Under 49 U.S.C. § 1154(a), a party generally may not use discovery to obtain a cockpit recorder recording, or a part of a recorder transcript or a still image from a video recorder that the NTSB has not made public. A court may allow it only after reviewing the material privately and deciding that what is public is not enough for a fair trial and that more is necessary. When a court allows it, the court must issue a protective order limiting its use to the case, and the material can be admitted into evidence only under seal.

For an injured person or a family, this means the strongest evidence about cause is often held by others and reachable only through legal process, while the evidence that can be lost is time-sensitive. The records closest to hand usually matter too: medical records, hospital and transport paperwork, the booking or ticket, receipts, photos, and the names of others aboard or watching. Families after a death often keep the same kinds of documents, along with records of the person's work and income. A conversation about a case like this can go through which of these records exist and who holds the rest. To talk that through with our attorney, you can request a case evaluation.

Injuries and What the Law May Allow in Damages

Helicopter crashes can cause severe harm, and the injuries that come up most often in these cases include traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, burns, crush injuries and fractures, as well as deaths. If you are living with one of these injuries, your treating providers and their records are what describe it medically; this page uses these terms only as the categories a case draws on.

The law describes damages, the losses a court may consider, in categories. Those that commonly come up include medical expenses, lost income and lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, and loss of consortium. Loss of consortium means, in plain words, the loss a spouse or close family member suffers when an injury or death takes away companionship, care and the shared life of the relationship. Whether any of these categories is available, and what it depends on, is decided by the law that applies and the facts of the case. Nothing about an injury on its own decides who was at fault.

When someone dies, the categories are set by the wrongful-death statute of the state whose law applies. They often include loss of financial support, loss of companionship and funeral and burial expenses, but each state defines its own list and who may bring the claim. Some states also cap non-economic damages, the losses without a receipt such as pain and suffering, and those caps vary in amount and in which claims they reach.

For a person with long recovery ahead or a family facing lost income, this is often where the questions are heaviest. The categories describe what the law may allow, not what any case will produce. A conversation can cover the injuries, the treatment so far, the work missed and, after a death, the family's relationships to the person who died.

Why the State Whose Law Applies Matters to You

Federal aviation law and state tort law do different jobs. The FAA's regulations and federal airworthiness standards set the safety rules that applied to the flight: how the operator had to run it, how the helicopter had to be maintained and what the pilot had to be qualified for. The civil lawsuit for damages is generally governed by state tort law. A federal rule can be relevant evidence of what was expected, but it does not decide the civil case by itself.

The boundary between the two is not always clean. A party may argue federal preemption, meaning that federal law displaces state law on a subject. For someone bringing a claim, that question is contested in aviation cases and can affect particular claims differently, since its reach depends on the specific claim and the federal law involved and it is usually argued claim by claim rather than settled for a whole case at once.

Crashes at sea can bring in another federal law. The Death on the High Seas Act, cited by its short title in 46 U.S.C. § 30301, is a federal law concerning deaths on the high seas, which can bear on offshore flights such as those to oil platforms. Its reach is limited by 46 U.S.C. § 30308: the Act "does not affect the law of a State regulating the right to recover for death," and it "does not apply to the Great Lakes or waters within the territorial limits of a State." Whether it applies depends on exactly where the death occurred.

Most of the rules that shape a case's timing and outcome are state rules, and they differ from state to state. Limitation periods differ, and no single national deadline applies to helicopter crash claims. Fault rules differ too. If you bear some share of fault, in a comparative-fault state that share, if any, reduces what the law may allow rather than barring the claim outright, with states dividing it in different ways. In a contributory-fault state, a rule followed in fewer places, a person found even partly at fault may be barred from recovering. No state's rule is the rule everywhere, and this national page does not set out any one state's deadlines.

For a family, the practical point is that the state whose law applies, and which court hears the case, can change the deadline, the fault rule and the damages available. Because no single national deadline applies, identifying the governing state is often among the first questions a conversation with an attorney can help sort out.