FTW96TA261 · Bell 212
Bell 212 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From CO (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96TA261
- 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 212
- Aircraft type
- Bell 212
- 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
- N91AL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From CO (no airport)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 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed Possible conflict
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Performance data, not complied with
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During support of forest fire fighting operations, the helicopter was conducting water drops and was on it's fifth drop of the flight. While proceeding upslope and down wind, at near maximum gross weight for hover out of ground effect, the helicopter began to settle. The pilot attempted to jettison the water load and reverse course. Jettisoning was unsuccessful and the helicopter settled into trees in the fire zone. The pilot sustained minor injuries and the helicopter sustained substantial damage from impact and post impact fire. During transport to storage by another helicopter, using a long line, the accident aircraft was dropped from approximately 700 feet, resulting in total destruction of the aircraft.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to comply with performance data for hover out of ground effect. A factor was not attaining load jettison.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96TA261
- Event ID
- 20001208X06000
- Case number
- FTW96TA261
- 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: cfcf6333b0b949495be68d7314e386d6ab7ab932e59e08462e8b441a354372ea; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:44:46.684Z.