NYC96LA145 · Bell 47G-5
Wiggins Airways Bell 47G-5 · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From No airport to Plymouth Municipal Airport (PYM)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC96LA145
- 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 47G-5
- Aircraft type
- Bell 47
- 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
- N8591F
- Operator
- Wiggins Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo Plymouth Municipal Airport (PYM), Plymouth, MA
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Carver, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter collided with power lines after the pilot completed an aerial spray run of a cranberry bog. According to the pilot, '...As I was departing the bog, I saw wires directly in front of me. I pulled back on the cyclic and raised the collective to try to fly over the wires. I cleared the wires initially, but could not recover from the maneuver before contacting the ground. The wind was behind me, and when at the top of the pull-up, I realized I couldn't fly out of it, and did a right 180 degree pedal turn, and lowered the nose to dive into the wind, I hit the ground in a level attitude before I could complete the maneuver.'
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate visual look out for obstacles, which resulted in a collision with wires and the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC96LA145
- Event ID
- 20001208X06341
- Case number
- NYC96LA145
- 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: 90f846a19beed00c777e5fe7c3e31d18fa53f16474d85c56523977c550638097; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:40:07.060Z.