ATL96LA068 · Bell 205A-1
Bell 205A-1 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL96LA068
- 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 205A-1
- Aircraft type
- Bell 205
- 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
- N68HJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo 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 · hover in ground effect
- 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
- 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
- Miscellaneous rotorcraft, tail pylon › Fatigue
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an external lift operation to pick up a fertilizer bucket, the vertical fin separated from the tail boom. The helicopter rotated to the right, and the pilot tried to move away from obstacles. The tail boom struck the ground and separated from the fuselage, while the helicopter was still rotating to the right. The main rotor blades hit a tree and the helicopter came to rest on the ground on its left side. Investigation revealed a fatigue fracture through a rivet hole of the vertical fin forward spar. An inspection of this area was signed off the day prior to the accident. However, examination of the wreckage, and a sister ship, revealed that the fracture location could not be observed during normal inspections because of other structure. One airworthiness directive (AD), and service bulletins issued by the manufacturer, addressed vertical fin spar cracks, but none applied to this ship. The AD required removal of the rivet, where the fatigue fracture initiated, to facilitate inspection of the rivet hole. The inspection was no longer required after compliance with a service bulletin that modified the spar. This helicopter was modified during its original manufacture.
Probable cause
fatigue failure of the vertical fin forward spar in an area that was not accessible to inspection. A factor relating to the accident was: guidance for inspection of the area (where the fatigue occurred) was insufficiently defined by the manufacturer.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL96LA068
- Event ID
- 20001208X05362
- Case number
- ATL96LA068
- 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: fdcfb73f85f78e1a572b01d297138ac16dd50053f08fc703fd10a118d1d31c78; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:43:27.481Z.