FTW98LA002 · Bell 206B
Petroleum Helicopter Bell 206B · Accident: nose over during landing
From Acadiana Regional Airport (ARA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA002
- 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
- N2163Y
- Operator
- Petroleum Helicopter
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Acadiana Regional Airport (ARA)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
- 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
- Nose over
- 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 › Touchdown, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor (CFI) was demonstrating an autorotation with a 180 degree turn to a soft sod area. The CFI reported that the helicopter touched down with only slight forward speed in a slightly nose low attitude. Following touchdown, the skids dug into the soft ground, and the helicopter began pitching forward. The CFI applied 'slight downward collective.' Subsequently, the helicopter nosed over, the main rotor blades contacted the ground, and the helicopter came to rest on its left side. The commercial pilot, who was receiving instruction, reported that the helicopter touched down smoothly in a level attitude 'carrying 5 to 10 knots forward speed.' An FAA inspector recommended that local helicopter operators discontinue using the sod area for running landings and autorotations until the ground is considered hard enough for practice running landings. The CFI stated that at the time of the accident, the wind was variable, but generally aligned with the direction of landing.
Probable cause
improper touchdown by the flight instructor. A related factor was: soft sod in the touchdown/landing area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA002
- Event ID
- 20001208X08999
- Case number
- FTW98LA002
- 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: 618735545fb48dbcdd6bb06ffbb1605f3fb1ae76303e96047c5d91063a69a50f; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:07:31.812Z.