Narrative:

I was tasked with flying three passengers plus one employee who I would fly to another of our landing sites. I was told earlier that this employee would be replacing the hand sanitizer dispensers located there. The helicopter was hot-loaded. Prior to the passengers; the ground loaders loaded the employee's tools and two boxes; which I assumed to be the dispensers. The passengers and employee were loaded next.I flew the aircraft to the [first site]; loaders unloaded the three passengers; and then I flew the employee to the [second site]. He said he would be about 15 minutes installing the dispensers; so I shut the aircraft down and assisted him. We unloaded the tools and two boxes; and carried them to where he would install them. It was at this time I noticed 'hazmat' had been hand-scribed on one of the boxes. The box contained hand sanitizer. He finished installing the dispensers; and we put the hand sanitizer in one of our gear boxes located [at the site]. I started the aircraft and we flew back; where I shut down and we spoke with the director of safety to confirm the status of the hand sanitizer as hazmat. I notified management immediately after.the box and the hazmat label were seen by multiple people prior to being loaded; but one simple question from myself; 'what's in the box?' might have prevented the entire incident. Even though I thought I already knew what was in the boxes; I should have verified.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Eurocopter A350 Captain reported HAZMAT erroneously transported without proper documentation to verify in compliance with company HAZMAT policy.

Narrative: I was tasked with flying three passengers plus one employee who I would fly to another of our landing sites. I was told earlier that this employee would be replacing the hand sanitizer dispensers located there. The helicopter was hot-loaded. Prior to the passengers; the ground loaders loaded the employee's tools and two boxes; which I assumed to be the dispensers. The passengers and employee were loaded next.I flew the aircraft to the [first site]; loaders unloaded the three passengers; and then I flew the employee to the [second site]. He said he would be about 15 minutes installing the dispensers; so I shut the aircraft down and assisted him. We unloaded the tools and two boxes; and carried them to where he would install them. It was at this time I noticed 'HAZMAT' had been hand-scribed on one of the boxes. The box contained hand sanitizer. He finished installing the dispensers; and we put the hand sanitizer in one of our gear boxes located [at the site]. I started the aircraft and we flew back; where I shut down and we spoke with the director of safety to confirm the status of the hand sanitizer as HAZMAT. I notified management immediately after.The box and the HAZMAT label were seen by multiple people prior to being loaded; but one simple question from myself; 'what's in the box?' might have prevented the entire incident. Even though I thought I already knew what was in the boxes; I should have verified.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.