FTW98FA156 · Bell 206-A
Bell 206-A · Accident: fire en route
From 3R5 · New Braunfels, TX to Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport (BRO)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98FA156
- 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 206-A
- 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
- TGJET
- Operator
- Pinarsa
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3R5 · New Braunfels, TXTo Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport (BRO), Brownsville, TX
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Fire
- 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
A witness observed the Bell 206-A helicopter 'flying fast' in a southerly direction at about 500 to 600 feet agl. Flames were coming from the helicopter's right rear side in the vicinity of the engine compartment, and very little smoke was observed. Prior to descending from view, the helicopter appeared to be in controlled flight. Subsequently, the aircraft impacted the ground and was destroyed by the in-flight and postimpact fire. Examination of the engine compartment revealed that the step portion of the forward firewall where the throttle and fuel line pass through had localized bluing; however the fuel line connector which was still attached to the firewall fitting, did not exhibit any fire damage. The #3 tail rotor drive shaft segment was found 66 feet prior to the initial impact scar. It was fractured with fire damaged fiberglass cloth wrapped around the forward end of the fractured shaft. According to a NTSB metallurgist, 'the fracture was consistent with an overstress after exposure to elevated temperatures.' The helicopter was returning to Guatemala after completion of schedule maintenance performed in the United States.
Probable cause
The engine compartment fire due to undetermined reasons, which resulted in the in-flight separation of the tailboom.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98FA156
- Event ID
- 20001211X09660
- Case number
- FTW98FA156
- 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: ea3a3edfa748b6250d9e47cc6e586d2eacddebd8f12d159271bd7398c074d7a4; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:38:46.433Z.