MIA97FA248 · Bell 47G
Bell 47G · Accident: in flight collision with object
From 6J4 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA97FA248
- 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
- 2 · 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 47G
- 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
- N70747
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 6J4To 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
- Unknown
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On the day of the accident, the pilot/owner of a helicopter (hel) arrived at the airport with the hel on a flatbed trailer. A CFI was to fly with the owner & give him instruction to eventually obtain a hel rating. There were no witnesses to the pre-flight, takeoff, or flight. Some people at the airport, who knew the CFI, were aware that he was going to provide instruction to the owner. They also had knowledge that the owner had very little flight time in the hel, and that instruction would include basics of hel instruction, including hovering & autorotations. Two watches, found in the wreckage, were stopped at 1410. About 1520, the local fire department was notified of a fire located about 1 mile northeast of the airport. The hel was found in a heavily wooded area, consumed by fire. Also, there was a tree near the hel wreckage, which was found broken. No other broken trees were found in the area. All the parts of the hel were found within the impact area. The tachometer was found in the wreckage with the face destroyed by heat damage, rendering the numbers unreadable. However, the needles were still in place & were split with the smaller needle (rotor) about 45 degree split from the large needle (engine). Examination of the wreckage, including partial teardown of the engine & teardown of the transmission, did not reveal any discrepancies.
Probable cause
in-flight collision with a tree, for undetermined reason(s).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA97FA248
- Event ID
- 20001208X08894
- Case number
- MIA97FA248
- 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: 7e4e494a26c8ef37a8f84016c55748d45b2294a4d9c6931ad112705886f6c646; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:49:01.667Z.