LAX96TA298 · Bell UH-1H
Bell UH-1H · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From Willits, CA to Ukiah Municipal Airport (UKI)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX96TA298
- 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 UH-1H
- Aircraft type
- Bell UH-1
- 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
- N499DF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Willits, CATo Ukiah Municipal Airport (UKI), CA
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Dual student › Flare, improper
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter was being used on a training flight with a commercial rated (student) pilot and a flight instructor (CFI) aboard. During a straight-in autorotation, the student made a 'very gradual' flare and allowed the helicopter to descend to approximately 10 feet agl before she began rolling on the throttle. As she rolled on the throttle, she inadvertently made an abrupt aft cyclic control movement. The tail rotor and stinger then struck the ground before the CFI could regain control. The CFI stabilized the helicopter in about a 3 to 4 foot hover and noticed a vibration. As he was setting the helicopter down, the vibration became worse. During shutdown the tail rotor and tailrotor gearbox separated from the tailboom. The commercial (student) pilot's current qualification card had been issued with the provision that she receive additional training and take a reevaluation check ride. After the accident, the pilot spent 2 weeks with the Army National Guard, where she received additional training in the UH-1H helicopter. A conversation between the CDF safety officer and the National Guard instructor pilot indicated that the student continued to have difficulty with aircraft control.
Probable cause
the commercial/student pilot's improper/abrupt use of aft cyclic during the flare, and the instructor's inadequate supervision of the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX96TA298
- Event ID
- 20001208X06568
- Case number
- LAX96TA298
- 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: 75937034dc5ffc9e873d30b9b9b18aacb3d14e8e063dea6072c71a936dd57804; retrieved 2026-09-22T21:33:32.448Z.