Pins that met hardness requirements are on the left; those that did not are on the right, marked with short yellow lines.
The Yellowhead Helicopters Bell Textron 212 was approaching a staging area to pick up a group of firefighters bound for a forest fire in Alberta, Canada, when the main rotor blades and rotor head assembly separated from the helicopter and the helicopter plunged to the ground.
The pilot, who was the only person on board, was killed and the helicopter was destroyed in the June 28, 2021, crash and subsequent fire 4 nm (7 km) northwest of Evansburg, in central Alberta.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) said in its final report that the accident investigation found that a main rotor hub strap retaining pin had been manufactured from “a type of steel that was weaker than the steel required by design,” and that, “[a]s a result, the pin failed in flight and its associated main rotor blade separated from the helicopter. The remaining b…
