NYC96LA135 · Bell 206B III
Joe Brigham Bell 206B III · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96LA135
- 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
- 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
- N444JB
- Operator
- Joe Brigham
- 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 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
- Maneuvering · aerial application
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of South Carver, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was doing aerial spraying of a cranberry bog, and had completed four passes before he executed a right turn to the north to begin the next run. After completing the turn, the helicopter began to spin to the right. After about three to four turns it stopped in a level hover, but then started spinning again to the right. After another three to four spins, it again stopped, and began a final spin to the right when it collided with the bog. Bell Helicopter Textron (BHT) published an Operations Safety Notice, in 1983, which dealt with unanticipated right yaw of the Bell 206 series. It stated that unanticipated right yaw could occur when maneuvering between hover and 30 MPH, and that a tail wind could reduce relative wind speed if a down wind translation occurred. It also stated that a loss of translational lift could result in a high power demand and an additional anti-torque requirements, which included high power demand situations such as low speed downwind turns. A local automated weather report indicated that the winds from were from 210 degrees at 6 knots. The pilot stated that the uncontrolled event initiated when he had completed a right hand application turn, and did not report a lateral cyclic displacement during the last application run.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the helicopter during an aerial application maneuver. This put the helicopter in a low slow down wind, high power demand turn, where it encountered a loss of tail rotor effectiveness, and the subsequent collision with the marsh.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96LA135
- Event ID
- 20001208X06333
- Case number
- NYC96LA135
- 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: 85cecfc93225a19af2401b2540015695c9973ac3cc43efd19fab0dc394d533a8; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:02:23.135Z.