LAX97LA285 · Bell 47G2
National Test Pilot School Bell 47G2 · Accident: hard landing
From Mojave Air & Space Port (MHV) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA285
- 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 47G2
- Aircraft type
- Bell 47
- 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
- N9021R
- Operator
- National Test Pilot School
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mojave Air & Space Port (MHV)To 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 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Collective, improper use of
- Dual student › Rotor RPM, not maintained
- Dual student › Throttle/power control, improper use of
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The dual student had a fixed wing pilot certificate issued by a foreign country, and no prior rotorcraft flight experience. The flight instructor reported that he was doing pattern work with the student and that he was 'guarding the controls while the left seat pilot was flying.' He further stated that on the third pattern, the student allowed the rpm to decrease and he cautioned the student to 'watch the RPM.' The student then raised the collective without adding additional throttle. As the instructor reached for the throttle, the student quickly raised the collective without any other action. The aircraft then yawed to the right and the rotor rpm decreased even further. The student then applied a rearward cyclic input in an attempt to flare the aircraft. The tail rotor struck the ground, destroying the tail rotor and shearing the tail rotor driveshaft. The aircraft touched down in a right turn and the skids collapsed. The instructor reported that during the accident sequence he was 'attempting to regain aircraft control while calling for [the student] to release the controls.'
Probable cause
The student's improper use of the throttle and collective controls and the flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA285
- Event ID
- 20001208X08678
- Case number
- LAX97LA285
- 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: 0b1f80c7c453b7531d7501ec127f866e4d5e89d40200bfb38f6f7e3e418cefe5; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:51:10.434Z.