CHI96FA088 · Bell 206B-III
Bell 206B-III · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From D87 · Harbor Springs, MI to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96FA088
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Bell 206B-III
- 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
- N2157J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From D87 · Harbor Springs, MITo 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 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
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Altitude/clearance, low
- Pilot in command › Flight into known adverse weather, performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter was declared missing on the day it had departed from its home airport. Three days later, it was found on top of a heavily wooded, snow covered, hill. According to the local coroner, the pilot had survived the accident but not the cold weather. There was no cold weather survival gear found at the accident scene. The helicopter was not equipped with an ELT. On the day it was declared missing, the helicopter was observed at an airport about 10 miles south-southwest of the accident site. The witness said it took off departing north at an altitude between 300 and 400 feet above ground level. The same witness said the visibility was 1 to 2 miles. Witnesses about 1 mile west of the accident site heard a metallic crashing sound. They said the tree tops east of them were obscured. An airport, about 1 miles east of the accident site, reported 3 miles visibility with fog about the time the witnesses reported hearing the collision sounds. The airframe, control system, and power plant examination revealed no anomalies that would have prevented flight.
Probable cause
flight into known adverse weather conditions (fog) at too low an altitude by the pilot. Factors associated with this accident were inadequate preflight planning and an improper inflight decision by the pilot when he chose to continue flight into the fog conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96FA088
- Event ID
- 20001208X05222
- Case number
- CHI96FA088
- 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: de8482bd481c2a1880f86e26997f9f3cc1a187bf76260344e8f2db270b1bfaed; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:26:23.244Z.