NYC95LA101 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From No airport to Beverly Regional Airport (BVY)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC95LA101
- 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 206B
- Aircraft type
- Bell 206
- 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
- N219CT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo Beverly Regional Airport (BVY), Beverly, MA
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Judgment, improper
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT ATTEMPTED A TAKEOFF FROM A TREE SURROUNDED FIELD AT NIGHT, IN HIS PERSONALLY OWNED HELICOPTER. DURING INITIAL CLIMB, THE MAIN ROTOR BLADES STRUCK TREES AND THE PILOT INITIATED A FORCED LANDING. THE HELICOPTER LANDED HARD AND ROLLED OVER ON ITS SIDE. THE PRIVATE PILOT HAD ACCUMULATED ABOUT 60 HOURS IN THIS MAKE AND MODEL, WITH 40 HOURS AS PILOT-IN-COMMAND. THE PILOT'S LAST THIRD CLASS MEDICAL WAS ISSUED 3 YEARS PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT WITH THE RESTRICTIONS, 'NOT VALID FOR NIGHT FLYING OR BY COLOR SIGNAL CONTROL.'
Probable cause
the pilot's improper decision to fly at night with a night vision deficiency, and his failure to maintain clearance with trees during takeoff, which resulted in an in-flight collision with the trees and the subsequent hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC95LA101
- Event ID
- 20001207X03530
- Case number
- NYC95LA101
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1995-05-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f901ffe9006b2ed39e5c3cd93ce5035cb1090e050ad4b5a433a2c9c9dbd81135; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:59:13.589Z.