LAX97LA320 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Truckee Tahoe Airport (TRK) to Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97LA320
- 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
- N90115
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Truckee Tahoe Airport (TRK), Truckee, CATo Minden-Tahoe Airport (MEV), NV
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Loss of tail rotor effectiveness › Encountered
- Pilot in command › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter landed hard and a main rotor blade separated and struck a parked airplane. At the time of the accident the winds were 190 to 250 degrees at 15 knots, gusting to 23 knots. As the pilot continued his approach to the landing pad in a northeasterly direction, the helicopter yawed to the right and the pilot applied full left pedal and pulled collective. The pilot stated that the engine was running fine, and he had experienced 'no unusual noise,' and that he had 'run out of tail rotor.' Review of a relative wind chart shows the helicopter's heading during the approach to the pad placed it in an area of the chart where unanticipated right yaw might occur.
Probable cause
A hard landing due to the failure of the pilot to adequately compensate for the wind direction and velocity on initiating his approach to the landing area, resulting in a loss of tail rotor authority.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97LA320
- Event ID
- 20001208X08884
- Case number
- LAX97LA320
- 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: 5888da94b45d3afe03a1c7bf456dc1d41213be0e264d9adc6ec90c3c467f7840; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:09:54.293Z.