FTW97LA252 · Bell 206B
American Aviation Bell 206B · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA252
- 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 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
- N49661
- Operator
- American Aviation
- 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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 · hover
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After loading the external basket with seismic wire bundles weighing about 300 to 400 pounds, the pilot flew the external load attached to a 100 foot long-line cable to the staging field. He made an approach to the landing area into the wind, and placed the basket on the ground; however, he did not release it. He moved the helicopter to the left side of the basket and then descended laterally to the left approximately 20 feet to a hover height of about 10 feet. As he hovered the helicopter forward about 10 to 15 feet, he felt a jolt. The helicopter nosed down to the left and came to rest on its right side. The company's procedure for repositioning the helicopter to land with an external load attached was that 'the cable must remain in visual contact with the pilot at all times.' The pilot was to 'lay the cable out in front of or to the side of the pilot position in full view of the pilot.' The pilot successfully completed a Part 133 evaluation on 6/18/97. At the time of employment, the pilot had 42 hours of experience in long-line external load operations. Since then, he had accumulated approximately 25 flight hours of additional experience.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper in-flight planning/decision. A related factor was his failure to follow the company procedure of maintaining visual contact with the external long-line cable, while hovering with it attached.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA252
- Event ID
- 20001208X08369
- Case number
- FTW97LA252
- 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: bd343d81e65d4e121e166075c88fe81eee46557b6edcf4c144149b44ab383eeb; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:59:54.000Z.