LAX95LA331 · Bell 47G-3B2
Bell 47G-3B2 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Yuma International Airport / Marine Corps Air Station Yuma (YUM) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX95LA331
- 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 47G-3B2
- 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
- N7942J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yuma International Airport / Marine Corps Air Station Yuma (YUM)To not recorded
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, annual inspection, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Aircraft preflight, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he was en route to spray a field at 150 feet agl when he heard a loud bang, and a fluttering vibration began through the airframe. The helicopter did not respond to anti-torque control inputs and began to spin. The pilot lowered the collective and reduced throttle to control the spin and the helicopter landed hard. The aft left engine mount frame was found separated from the fuselage frame attachment clevis ears. The clevis ears were found fractured. The engine was displaced forward and to the right and was impinging on the collective servo. The tail rotor short shaft was pulled out and disconnected. The components were sent for metallurgical examination. The clevis ear fractures revealed features indicative of fatigue cracking emanating from multiple origins on the forward and aft faces. The fractures exhibited severe oxidation damage with rust colored deposits evident externally. The metal in the frame and clevis ears was correct for the material specification in the manufacturing drawings. During assembly a washer is welded circumferentially around the outside diameter to the inboard side of each clevis ear. Microhardness testing of the welds, heat affected zones (HAZ), and the base metal of the clevis ears and corresponding washers revealed that the tensile strength of the HAZ adjacent to the fracture of the forward clevis ear was significantly higher than the strength of the weld and the base metal. An annual inspection was accomplished on the helicopter 77 hours prior to the accident and the area of the cracks are the subject of a daily inspection requirement.
Probable cause
the failure of the pilot and company maintenance personnel to detect a crack in the clevis ears during the required daily inspection and the recent annual inspection. A factor in the accident was the improper welding and stress relief procedure used to assemble the components, which induced high residual stresses in the clevis ears and led to fatigue cracking of the part.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX95LA331
- Event ID
- 20001207X04524
- Case number
- LAX95LA331
- 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: 83a9c04638d4a70a488c100ad27783c70ead77acf8af315d7cdeca7a197e51c7; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:16:52.161Z.