ATL94LA172 · Bell 47D1 WASP
Valley Flying Service Bell 47D1 WASP · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From No airport to AL (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL94LA172
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Bell 47D1 WASP
- Aircraft type
- Bell 47
- Category
- Helicopter
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N908B
- Operator
- Valley Flying Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo AL (no airport)
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 137: Agricultural
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · landing roll
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- On ground/water collision with terrain/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE OPERATOR REPORTED THAT DURING DEPARTURE FROM THE AERIAL APPLICATION LOADING AREA, AN UNDETERMINED MALFUNCTION OCCURRED. THE PILOT ABORTED THE TAKEOFF, AND MADE A SLIDE-ON LANDING TO THE GRASSY AREA BETWEEN THE RUNWAY AND ADJACENT CROPS. DURING THE SLIDING STOP, THE SPRAY BOOM CAUGHT IN THE CROPS, THE RIGHT SKID COLLAPSED, AND THE HELICOPTER ROLLED OVER. THE ENGINE WAS EXAMINED WITH NO ANOMALIES FOUND. DENSITY ALTITUDE AT THE TIME OF THE ACCIDENT WAS 2300 FEET.
Probable cause
UNDETERMINED.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL94LA172
- Event ID
- 20001206X02176
- Case number
- ATL94LA172
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 481ad2a92511ac99dc6fd3ee8fb1aa3abb5ed5b0c885f2fd75db855f551ddcf7; retrieved 2026-09-23T00:39:38.538Z.