FTW97FA208 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B and Bell 206L-1 · Accident: midair collision en route
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97FA208
- 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
- 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
Aircraft 1 · 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
- N115AL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Air Logistics (Intracoastal City) Heliport (LA09)To Tensas Flying Service Airport (LA53), GRAND CHENIER, LA
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Midair collision
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Aircraft 2 · Bell 206L-1
- 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
- N2773A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 0R3 · Abbeville, LATo EAST CAMERON, GM
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Midair collision
- 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
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, inadequate
- Pilot of other aircraft › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
N115AL, a Bell 206B helicopter, and N2773A, a Bell 206L-1 helicopter, collided in midair approximately 3 nm west of Intracoastal City, Louisiana. N2773A was in cruise flight, transiting through the Intracoastal City traffic advisory area from northeast to southwest. N115AL departed Intracoastal City westbound. Radar data indicated that the angle between the flight paths was about 60 degrees. The pilot of N115AL reported that he had just leveled out at 700 feet agl when he saw N2773A to his right at a 'slightly' lower altitude and banked hard left. A witness and physical evidence indicated that the main rotor blades of N115AL struck the tail rotor of N2773A. N2773A was not observed to take evasive action. Subsequently, N2773A impacted the ground in an uncontrolled descent, and N115AL made a forced landing in a slough and sank. Prior to departure, the pilot of N115AL communicated his intentions on the local traffic advisory frequency. There were no radio communications from N2773A on the advisory frequency, and the operator of N2773A did not include the use of traffic advisory services as a company standard operating procedure in its operations manual.
Probable cause
The failure of both pilots to see and avoid each other's aircraft. Factors were the failure of the pilot of N2773A to use the available traffic advisory service and the failure of the operator of N2773A to make the use of traffic advisory services a company standard operating procedure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97FA208
- Event ID
- 20001208X08109
- Case number
- FTW97FA208
- 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: 3eb3ca3b197f80baa3352b595f5ce0bc86e34d1d280f8224d1652d34bbe03586; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:56:44.576Z.