Why Helicopters Crash
Helicopters are unforgiving aircraft. Unlike a fixed-wing plane, a helicopter is inherently unstable — it requires constant, coordinated inputs from both hands and both feet just to remain airborne. When something goes wrong, there is little margin for error and often no safe place to land.
The causes of helicopter crashes fall into several recurring categories:
Weather. Accurate weather information is essential to safe helicopter operations, but helicopters frequently fly to locations — remote accident scenes, off-airport landing zones, mountain terrain — where reliable weather data is simply unavailable. Inadvertent flight into clouds or fog can cause a pilot to become spatially disoriented within seconds. Thunderstorms can bring a helicopter down almost instantly. The combination of incomplete weather information and pressure to complete a mission is a recurring factor in fatal crashes.
Controlled Flight into Terrain. Helicopters crash into mountains, ridges, wires, water and hillsides with troubling regularity. Many of these accidents occur at night or in low-visibility conditions. The aircraft is functioning normally right up until impact — the problem is that the crew didn’t know the terrain was there, or couldn’t see it in time to avoid it.
Mechanical Failure. Rotor blades, engines, tail rotor systems, and transmission components all fail. Sometimes the failure is the result of a design defect. Sometimes it results from improper maintenance or the use of substandard parts. In either case, the consequences are typically catastrophic.
Crew Fatigue. A disproportionate share of cretain helicopter accidents — namely EMS operations — occur during the overnight hours. Fatigue degrades judgment and reaction time in ways that are difficult for the affected pilot to recognize. Night operations combined with fatigue create conditions for disaster.
Unprepared Landing Sites. Helipads are engineered environments — surveyed for obstacles, graded for stability, cleared of hazards. Many helicopter operations require landing in locations that are none of those things. Wire strikes, uneven terrain, and unexpected obstacles contribute to a significant number of accidents.
Why Helicopter Crash Cases Are Among the Most Complex in Aviation Law
Litigating a helicopter crash case is genuinely more difficult than litigating most airplane accidents. Several factors combine to make these cases challenging even for experienced aviation attorneys.
Evidence is scarce — and often destroyed. Most helicopters do not carry cockpit voice recorders or flight data recorders. They frequently operate outside radar coverage and away from air traffic control contact, leaving no ATC recordings and no radar track. The wreckage itself — ordinarily the primary evidence source — is often consumed by post-impact fire. Helicopters incorporate significant composite materials that burn readily and leave little behind. What remains of a large aircraft frequently fits in a small evidence locker.
The mechanical interdependency problem. In an airplane crash, a lawyer working to establish mechanical causation looks for a single component that failed before impact. A helicopter is different. It has dozens of high-energy rotating parts — rotor blades, drive shafts, gearboxes, tail rotor assemblies — all interconnected. When one fails, the energy released cascades through the drivetrain, breaking other components before the aircraft ever reaches the ground. Sorting out which part failed first, and why, requires specialized expertise and is genuinely contested in many cases.
NTSB investigations favor industry. The National Transportation Safety Board investigates every aviation accident. But in helicopter cases, the NTSB’s final report is frequently not published until after the statute of limitations has expired — sometimes not until after trial. More significantly, the NTSB’s investigation process allows manufacturer representatives to participate, while victims and their families have no seat at the table. The result is that the NTSB’s findings, when they arrive, tend to reflect the industry’s preferred narrative.
Foreign manufacturers add complexity. The most widely used helicopters in the United States are manufactured in France. Deposing the responsible engineers means deposing witnesses in France, often in French, under the procedural requirements of the Hague Convention. Performance data, maintenance manuals, and design documentation use European standards and conventions that differ from American practice in ways that are disorienting even for experienced aviation lawyers. And when the manufacturer is partially or wholly owned by a foreign government — as several major helicopter manufacturers are — the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act may come into play, potentially eliminating the right to a jury trial and to punitive damages.
Federal statutes limit recovery. The General Aviation Revitalization Act (GARA) bars products liability claims against aircraft and component manufacturers when the aircraft is more than 18 years old. Most helicopters currently in service were manufactured decades ago. While GARA has exceptions — including for replacement parts less than 18 years old, and for manufacturer misconduct in the FAA certification process — these require careful investigation and affirmative proof. In crew cases, workers’ compensation law adds a further layer of complexity, barring recovery from an employer for pilot error, maintenance failures, and weather-related accidents regardless of how egregious the conduct.
Experience That Makes a Difference
Danko Meredith has handled helicopter crash cases for more than 30 years, representing victims of crashes involving EMS helicopters, tour operators, private operators, and commercial services. We have likely handled more helicopter crash cases than any other plaintiff’s firm on the West Coast.
That experience matters in concrete ways. Mike Danko is himself a helicopter and fixed-wing pilot with nearly 5,000 flight hours. He approaches helicopter cases not just as a lawyer examining evidence, but as someone who has spent hundreds of hours managing the same systems, in similar conditions, making the same kinds of decisions. That firsthand knowledge shapes how we investigate crashes, how we question defense experts, and how we explain technical issues to juries.
We have the investigative resources to move quickly after an accident — before evidence disappears and before the NTSB’s investigation forecloses access to the wreckage. We have established relationships with leading aviation accident reconstruction experts, human factors specialists, and metallurgists who have testified in helicopter cases nationwide.
Our helicopter crash results include:
- $23 million — Settlement for the victim of a helicopter crash
- $12 million — Settlement against a maintenance facility for a helicopter crash
- $10 million — Jury verdict for the widow of a pilot killed in a helicopter crash
- $9.75 million — Settlement for a family injured in a tour helicopter crash in Kauai
- $2.9 million — Jury verdict against an overhaul facility for a pilot injured in a helicopter crash
- $2.3 million — Settlement for a fatal air ambulance crash
If you or a family member has been involved in a helicopter accident, contact Danko Meredith for a free consultation. We handle helicopter crash cases on contingency — there are no fees or costs unless we recover for you.