Westwind Helicopters Bell 206B accident
Bell 206B · Accident: propeller/rotor contact to person while standing
From LOON LAKE, CA to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA262
- 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
- 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
- N123WF
- Operator
- Westwind Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From LOON LAKE, CATo 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · idling rotors
- 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
- Propeller/rotor contact to person
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Passenger › Unsafe/hazardous condition, not understood
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 7,000-hour chief pilot reported that the area was clear when he approached the helipad, which was located on private property. After touchdown, he reduced the throttle to ground idle and told his passengers it was safe to exit. The pilot did not report that any ground (crowd control) personnel were present to assist his passengers, and no barriers existed around the helipad area. Within less than one minute after the landing, a waiting passenger approached the helicopter from the rear. The prospective passenger became distracted due to the blowing dust and walked into the rotating tail rotor blades. Years earlier, the FAA published information alerting operators of the lack of rotating rotor blade conspicuity. Also to enhance safety, the FAA suggested that ground support personnel be available to assist passengers, and that placement of physical barriers around operation areas be placed to separate prospective passengers from hazards. No evidence was found that the helicopter operator had ground support personnel present to assist the prospective passenger, or that it had placed restricting access devices around the helipad area.
Probable cause
the passenger's failure to recognize and avoid the hazard associated with the rotating tail rotor. The operator/event organizer's lack of ground facilities or support personnel to assist/control passenger access to the helipad was a related factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA262
- Event ID
- 20001208X08445
- Case number
- LAX97LA262
- 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, damage. 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: e8ea1499692915a487f8000cff902bfde205edf57d46aaaf6344136de5a738bd; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:28:02.125Z.