Helicopter Support Services Bell 206B accident
Bell 206B · Accident while standing
From an unrecorded airport to PONY CREEK, ID
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's flight rules. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96LA165
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 206B
- 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
- N750LT
- Operator
- Helicopter Support Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo PONY CREEK, ID
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter Possible conflict
- 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
- Standing · engine(s) operating
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
- Landing gear, skid assembly › Snagged
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter airline transport pilot landed in a remote mountainous site to board two timber cutters and provide transportation. The timber cutters had constructed a helipad at the site by felling a tree, slicing it into two sections, and placing the sections about 7 feet apart from each other on sloping terrain. The forward section was secured with two pieces of round wood loosely placed on the ground, but the section could pivot on its curved side. After surveying the landing site, the pilot set the helicopter down on the two tree sections with the tip of the right skid resting on the aft edge of the forward log. The timber cutters loaded their equipment in the rear of the helicopter and boarded while it was standing with the rotors turning. The pilot stated that the forward log then began to roll aft, and the right skid shifted downward. The pilot attempted to lift the log off the right skid. The helicopter continued to nose over as the pilot added power and collective. A main rotor blade struck rising terrain in front of the helicopter, and the helicopter rolled over onto its right side. The pilot was the owner/operator of the company and had applied for authorization to conduct flight operations under 14 CFR 135. However, he was not yet FAA-certificated to conduct such flights. The cutters had received no formal training on helipad construction.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper remedial action after helicopter's right skid became snagged by a log that was used in the construction of a temporary landing site. Factors relating to the accident were: the pilot's selection of an unsuitable landing area, inadequate construction of the landing site by ground personnel, and the ground personnel's lack of training regarding the construction of a temporary landing zone.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96LA165
- Event ID
- 20001208X06380
- Case number
- SEA96LA165
- 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: 4ebbe9c66fc9ffc5e227a9bf306dbcd0ad67b7f2de643d5ae0e12ad3cbb2e0ad; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:37:20.593Z.