SE-JKF

Information

This aircraft was constructed at Eurocopter's production plant in Marignane, France, back in 2008. It was imported by Airlift Helicopter Sweden together with SE-JKE in June the same year. The helicopter was engaged in liming operations throughout large parts of Scandinavia.

Accident
The helicopter was badly damaged, and subsequently written off, following an accident near Arlanda Airport in Stockholm on 9 January 2009.

The 144-hour aircraft was about to land at the airport to pick up passengers for a taxi flight when the tail rotor gearbox chip warning came on. The helicopter started to rotate and eventually ended up in an uncontrolled yaw and impacted the ground in a high rate of decent and at a low airspeed. The experienced pilot, who was the sole occupant at the time of the accident, survived with minor injuries.

The Swedish Accident Investigation Board determined that the accident was caused by the fact that the helicopter had not been restored to an airworthy condition after a maintenance work had been carried out. The tail rotor seized to work due to the lack of oil in the tail rotor gearbox, and the consequences of the failure were aggravated by deficiencies in the emergency instructions for this type of helicopter in respect of the management of a chip warning or a tail rotor drive failure respectively.