What happened
On 2 February 2005, a Bell 206B III helicopter, registration ZS-HVZ, was conducting a ferry flight near East London. The flight had originally commenced as an air ambulance mission from Cofimvaba to Frere Hospital in East London, where a patient was successfully offloaded. Following the medical mission, the pilot and a paramedic departed the hospital, intending to land at East London Aerodrome to refuel before continuing to Umtata.
Shortly after departing the hospital, the pilot experienced a sudden event where the front right door flew open before closing again. During the process of securing the door, the crew was alerted that the left rear cabin door and its associated post had detached from the aircraft. The pilot contacted Air Traffic Control to report the incident and requested assistance in checking for any ground injuries. After observing ground personnel waving to indicate no injuries had occurred, the pilot landed to recover the remnants of the door assembly. Upon landing at the aerodrome and shutting down the engines, a subsequent inspection revealed that the aircraft had sustained substantial damage caused by the door assembly striking the main and tail rotor blades.
The investigation
The SACAA AIID investigation focused on the structural integrity of the cabin doors and the sequence of the mechanical failure. Investigators examined the aircraft's maintenance history, noting that the last Mandatory Periodic Inspection (MPI) had been completed on 18 November 2004, with approximately 56.7 flight hours logged since that inspection.
While the pilot reported that there was no noticeable impact or vibration felt on the flight controls when the assembly struck the rotors, the physical evidence of the damage was significant. A search was initiated to locate the missing doorpost assembly to determine the exact nature of the failure.