Learning From Tragedy

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A BJT review of turbine business aircraft accident reports from the past 25 years turned up several cases in which passengers, operators, or owners unwittingly contributed to a crash’s probable cause or the degree of injury to themselves or others. A closer look at these reports points to concrete steps business aviation users can take to stay safe.

Buckle your Seatbelt

Here are a few incidents to remind you that not having your seat belt or harness buckled when seated—or instructed to do so by the crew—continues to be one of the most common ways to get injured in flight.

■ On June 6, 2019, in a light privately-operated twin-engine business jet, the pilot had anticipated some turbulence along the route of flight, briefed his three passengers, and turned on the seat belt sign. As far as the pilot was aware, all the passengers were seated with their seat belts on during the turbulence. One of the passengers was an elderly man, and another passenger was his caregiver. The caregiver reported that she had gotten out of her seat to assist the elderly man in adjusting his restraints more firmly. During the time she had gotten up to aid him, she was thrown about the cabin from the turbulence. The pilot landed the airplane as soon as possible, and the caregiver was treated at a local hospital for a fractured right arm.

■ A Christmas eve 2015 accident involving a small privately-owned single-engine turboprop resulted in the pilot and one passenger receiving minor injuries. Two passengers received serious injuries, one of whom was found out of her seat, unconscious, on the floor of the airplane. It was unclear if she was unrestrained at the time. She died several months later due to complications from her injuries. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)—the U.S. independent federal agency responsible for investigating serious aircraft accidents—could not determine if she had properly used the restraint system, as it was found unlatched with the seat belt portion of the assembly extended. A  post-accident functional check of the aft seat belts found them to be operational.

■ An air taxi twin-engine turboprop was in cruise flight on Jan. 13, 2021 when it suddenly encountered 30 to 45 seconds of severe turbulence. One of the three passengers was not seated and sustained serious injuries. The injured passenger reported that she struck her head on the overhead ceiling compartment, then fell onto the armrest. At the destination airport, the passenger was met by emergency medical personnel, but she declined additional medical treatment. The passenger reported that she sought medical treatment the following week and learned she had a fractured rib. Mechanics performed a functional check of the seat belt and found it to be operational. The NTSB determined the probable cause of this accident to be: An encounter with severe turbulence, which resulted in serious injury to an unseated passenger. The report did not state whether the fasten seat belt sign was on at the time of the turbulence.

Beware The Blade

There are numerous and tragic accounts of passengers seemingly ignoring crew instructions and walking into turning airplane propellers and helicopter tail rotors.

■ On April 4, 1996, following the landing of a privately-owned, high-wing twin-engine turboprop, a passenger died after failing to heed ground personnel instructions. The pilot stated he had taken the passenger along for the first drop of parachutists. After landing he stopped at the ramp and left the engines running while the next load of parachutists were loaded. He told the passenger to exit through the rear door and that ground personnel would help her out. He then remained in the pilot’s seat. The passenger exited the airplane through the rear door and was instructed by ground personnel to walk to the rear of the airplane. Instead, she turned suddenly, walked forward and was struck by the left propeller. The NTSB’s brief investigation report did not include a determination why she did not follow instructions or if she may not have heard them.

■ On June 6, 2006, an air taxi single-engine turbine helicopter with the pilot and three passengers was on a daily oil platform check. The pilot asked his passengers if they had any questions on aircraft safety. He also said he had briefed and flown with these passengers before, and that the passengers indicated that they had no questions regarding safety or emergency equipment. After landing, with the helicopter facing the helideck’s staircase and with the engine idling, two of the passengers exited the helicopter and proceeded down the stairs located forward of the helicopter. A few minutes later, one of the passengers reappeared from the same stairway and approached the helicopter from the front. The remaining passenger entered the helideck from a stairway facing the aircraft’s tail, approached the helicopter from the rear and suffered serious injuries when he walked into the idling helicopter’s tail-rotor. The NTSB determined the accident was caused by the “passenger’s failure to follow procedures associated with operations in the vicinity of the helicopter.”

■ A passenger on an air taxi twin-engine turbine helicopter, who had been reminded several times on the day of the accident to stay away from the rear of the helicopter, was killed when the passenger exited the aircraft before the pilot gave the okay, walked to the rear, and was struck by the turning tail rotor. At the end of the flight, on June 30, 1990, the pilot was unaware that the passenger had exited because the pilot had not given the okay for passengers to deplane. When the pilot felt the helicopter shudder and heard a loud noise, he immediately shut down the engine and exited with the other two passengers. The passengers had been briefed as to the areas to avoid around the helicopter and the passenger that perished “had been reminded at least three times during the day to stay away from the rear of the helicopter,” according to the final NTSB investigation report. The agency concluded that the “passenger did not follow the procedures associated with the operations in the vicinity of the helicopter.”

Control the Controls

■ On Aug. 23, 2025, after noticing approaching weather, the pilot of a private single-engine turbine helicopter elected to return to the landing site from which he had departed. After landing, while the main rotor was turning at reduced power, the helicopter suddenly rolled over onto its right side. The pilot reported that while turning to speak with the rear seat passenger, the front seat passenger inadvertently touched one of the aircraft’s controls that would be used if a copilot was in that seat. Perhaps the passenger shouldn’t be held totally accountable in this case. The aircraft’s flight manual noted that when carrying passengers “unfamiliar with helicopter operation,” the pilot should consider removing the copilot controls “or accepting the potential hazard of leaving them installed.” What’s more, the NTSB said that “contributing to the accident was the pilot’s decision to leave the dual flight controls installed with a non-pilot passenger in the front seat.”

■ Another example of a situation caused inadvertently by a front seat passenger happened on July 7, 2012, when the pilot of a private single-engine turboprop reported that during cruise flight, the engine suddenly lost all power. Unable to restart the engine, he made a forced landing in a bog. Afterwards, the pilot noticed that the emergency fuel selector lever on the right side of the center console (between the pilot and passenger seats) had been moved to the shutoff position. The passenger, who was seated in the right seat of the cockpit, stated that he was unaware of the fuel lever and was not briefed on specific areas to be aware of in the cockpit but that he had been adjusting himself in the seat just before the engine quit.

■ Here’s a case of he said, she said, and the NTSB saying it didn’t know. On Oct. 28, 1997, after an air taxi twin-engine turboprop landed and shut down power, the captain positioned himself near the bottom of the main cabin door stairs to direct the passengers deplaning. Nevertheless, a passenger fell and was seriously injured when she hit the pavement. The pilot claimed she tripped on her overcoat. The passenger, who did have a long coat draped over one of her arms, was wearing two- to three-inch spiked high heel shoes and said she fell after her left shoe got stuck on the stairs. When asked if she had tripped on her coat, she said she had not. An FAA inspector tried unsuccessfully to make her shoe fit into the hinged part of any of the steps. He also tried it with his smaller size shoe and “was unable to duplicate in any way, getting my heel stuck in the hinge of the step.” The back of the step slants backwards and the rounded back of the heel prevents the bottom tip of a shoe from reaching that part, he said. The NTSB acknowledged she did indeed trip, but was unable to determine how, so simply concluded its investigation with “the passenger tripped for an undetermined reason.”

■ On July 26, 1989, there was another incident of a passenger being seriously injured from tripping. In this aircraft, the wing spar structure carries through from the wing on one side of the aircraft to the wing on the other side creating a hump that crosses the width of the cabin’s aisle. While deplaning at night, the passenger tripped on the hump. The operator reported that it was visibly marked. While the NTSB cited the passenger for “failure to observe a raised and marked area” in the passenger cabin floor, it also determined that contributing factors were darkness and the aisle “designed with a raised area which partially obstructed its use.” This design, incidentally, is not unique to this particular aircraft make and model.

■ During the initial descent in an air taxi single-engine turbine helicopter on Jan. 1, 2003, the pilot felt a shudder and heard a noise. The helicopter began to yaw and then started to spin, and the pilot managed to make a controlled ditching where the aircraft came to rest partially submerged. A moment before the accident, one of the passengers reported he observed the right baggage door was “open and flapping.” It was learned that before takeoff, that passenger loaded his baggage in the right aft cargo compartment and boarded the helicopter. According to the pilot, the passenger had previously received a safety briefing regarding the operation of the helicopter’s doors and latches. Examination of the helicopter after the accident revealed the lower forward baggage compartment door had been closed but not latched. It subsequently opened in flight, allowing baggage to fall out of the compartment and hit the tail rotor blades—shearing off the tail rotor drive shaft. The NTSB said that a factor contributing to the cause of the accident was the “passenger’s failure to follow the procedures for properly securing the helicopter’s doors and latches.”