Air Methods Bell 407 accident
Bell 407 · Accident: in flight collision with object during initial climb
From Aurora, CO to N/A
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA068
- 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
- 4 · 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 407
- Aircraft type
- Bell 407
- 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
- N771AL
- Operator
- Air Methods
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aurora, COTo N/A
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Wire, static; Wire, transmission
- 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
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not followed
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, not possible
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On takeoff from an automobile accident site, with the patient on board, the air ambulance flight made a climbing right turn and flew into power lines. Witness marks on the helicopter provided evidence the helicopter struck the transmission line from below and impacted the ground in an inverted attitude below and to the west of the lines. Light conditions were a dark night with emergency response, construction, and emergency response vehicle lights illuminating the landing site area. The existence of the power lines was unknown to the fire rescue on-scene commander and the light conditions prevented the pilot from seeing anything outside the lighted area. The unmarked power lines were 622 feet apart and oriented northeast/southwest. The southern tower was 106 feet high and the northern tower 83.5 feet high. The towers and lines did not meet obstruction-marking criteria and were not marked. In addition, they were not depicted on sectional or topographic maps. Company policy, promulgated through documents and training, provided landing zone departure procedures which instructed the pilot to climb straight ahead in a near vertical climb to a minimum of 300 feet agl before turning. The horizontal distance from the helicopter's takeoff position to the power line was approximately 630 feet based on global positioning system (GPS) measurement.
Probable cause
The pilot's inability to maintain adequate visual lookout due to the lighting conditions and his failure to follow company procedures for departure from a landing zone. Factors were dark night conditions, bright lights in the landing zone which prevented vision beyond the zone, and the power line existence was not available on charts to either the pilot or ground personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA068
- Event ID
- 20001208X09300
- Case number
- FTW98FA068
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: local date, investigation status, destination. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1997-12-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 866d39f6977e844c9aaaa25fab5e3a6ea62e878ba84e162c4d497cb2c318e295; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:26:48.700Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N771AL; the operator shown is the name the NTSB's other records give its FAA operator code, QMLA.