FTW98TA072 · Bell 206B-III
Aero West Bell 206B-III · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From No airport to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98TA072
- 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-III
- 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
- N124DA
- Operator
- Aero West
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Pilot in command › Loss of tail rotor effectiveness, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter was under contract by the New Mexico Game and Fish Department for the purpose of elk herd evaluation. The right front seat passenger said that they were flying northbound, approximately 180 to 200 feet above the ground, in an attempt to split a heard of elk, for counting purposes. He said that the helicopter was traveling at less than 10 knots, the pilot initiated a turn, and within 3 to 5 seconds, they rotated to the ground. The pilot stated that he thought they were traveling north at approximately 100 feet agl and approximately 30 knots when he initiated the right turn. He further stated that 'once the turn got started, I couldn't stop it, even with full left pedal.' The pilot reported that he believed the wind was from the west at approximately 5 to 10 knots (the density altitude was calculated to be 9,043 feet). He said that when the accident happened, 'I heard nothing unusual nor felt anything.' According to FAA AC 90-95, unanticipated right yaw can be brought about by low airspeeds, high power regimes, left crosswinds or tailwinds, and right turning maneuvers.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent loss of tail rotor effectiveness. A factor was the high density altitude weather condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98TA072
- Event ID
- 20001208X09320
- Case number
- FTW98TA072
- 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: 6be2f6aec8765b198a532a99f4161012cb9c8a23adb6d46e53de90b361af558c; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:42:25.486Z.