SEA95LA221 · Bell UH-1L
Bell UH-1L · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA95LA221
- 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 UH-1L
- Aircraft type
- Bell UH-1
- 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
- N70410
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Compressor assembly, impeller › Fatigue
- Terrain condition › None suitable
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During log slinging operations the restricted category UH-1L rotorcraft's T53-L-13B military engine experienced a total loss of power. The pilot dropped the log load and autorotated into a small, upsloping, cleared area within the surrounding wooded terrain landing hard. Postcrash examination of the engine revealed that the centrifugal impeller had separated due to fatigue cracking in one of the drain holes. An Airworthiness Directive (AD) had been issued relative to the -08 impeller but did not include the -07 impeller (installed in the accident engine). The -07 and -08 impellers are essentially identical with the exception that the -07 impeller is found on military variants of the engine whereas the -08 is found only on civilian variants. As the -07 impeller was not included in the AD, the operator was not required to conduct the appropriate inspections described in the mandated service bulletin. Additionally, the AD did not require a cycle count for the impeller as addressed in the service bulletin, thus rendering the service bulletin unusable even if it had been mandated for the -07 impeller.
Probable cause
the fatigue failure of the centrifugal impeller and the lack of suitable terrain for a forced landing. Factors contributing to the accident were: the lack of required compliance with the FAA Airworthiness Directive by the operator, the insufficiently defined FAA procedure within the AD (failure to include the -07 impeller and establish a cycle count program), and inadequate rotor RPM.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA95LA221
- Event ID
- 20001207X04608
- Case number
- SEA95LA221
- 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: f5148a6b1e91d6a1c7b2fa48b24fd14e32ca7818f744b588c8443e8a7a5ac144; retrieved 2026-09-21T13:04:19.142Z.