About

The world's most comprehensive helicopter incident database.

RotorAlert tracks every helicopter crash, collision, and forced landing worldwide - extracted from news reports by AI and verified against official investigation records.

4,266

Incidents tracked

2,867

Confirmed fatalities

21+

Countries covered

What is RotorAlert?

RotorAlert is a free, publicly accessible database of helicopter incidents worldwide. It combines data from the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), international aviation safety records, Wikipedia's curated list of notable incidents, and a daily AI-powered pipeline that scans global news for new crashes.

Every incident in the database includes the date, location, aircraft type, operator, fatality count, severity classification, probable cause, and a link back to the original source - whether that's an NTSB accident report, a news article, or a Wikipedia entry.

How it works

Daily news monitoring

Every day at 6am UTC, our pipeline searches global news sources for helicopter crash reports using NewsAPI. Articles are collected from hundreds of international outlets.

AI extraction

Each article is processed by Claude (Anthropic's AI) which extracts structured data - date, location, aircraft type, fatalities, severity, and probable cause - from the raw text.

Deduplication & storage

New incidents are checked against existing records to avoid duplicates, then stored in our database with full source attribution.

Historical data

The database is seeded with over 3,000 incidents from the NTSB accident database (2000-present), the NTSB CAROL report dataset (2016-2023), and Wikipedia's curated list of notable helicopter accidents going back to 1968.

Data sources

NTSB Aviation Accident Database ↗

US National Transportation Safety Board - complete accident records from 1982 to present.

NTSB CAROL Reports ↗

Full investigation reports with probable cause findings, 2016-2023.

Wikipedia - Notable helicopter accidents ↗

Curated list of historically significant helicopter incidents from 1968 onwards.

NewsAPI ↗

Real-time news aggregation from hundreds of global outlets, updated daily.

Who is it for?

Aviation safety researchers

Analyse trends in helicopter incidents across aircraft types, operators, and regions.

Journalists

Find context and historical precedent for helicopter crashes in the news.

Aviation lawyers

Research accident histories for specific aircraft types and operators.

Pilots & operators

Understand common causes and high-risk scenarios in helicopter operations.

Disclaimer

RotorAlert is an independent research tool and is not affiliated with any aviation authority, government body, or official investigation organisation. Data is sourced from public records and news reports and may contain inaccuracies. Always refer to official NTSB, AAIB, BEA, or other national investigation authority reports for authoritative accident information. Fatality counts and probable causes may be preliminary and subject to revision.