A Sikorsky S-76C++ that crashed into a Louisiana marsh after an en route bird strike was equipped with lightweight acrylic windshields — installed in place of the original bird-strike-resistant laminated glass, the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said in its final report on the Jan. 4, 2009, accident.
The crash killed both pilots and six of the seven passengers, who had been on their way from Amelia, Louisiana, U.S., to an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico when the helicopter struck a red-tailed hawk and plunged into the marsh at 1409 local time, about seven minutes after departure. The remaining passenger was critically injured, the report said.
The NTSB said that maintenance records showed that about two years before the accident, the operator, PHI, had replaced the original windshields with cast acrylic windshields.1
The NTSB, in its final report on the accident, said that the probable causes were “the su…
