LAX98TA123 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Van Nuys Airport (VNY) to NEWHALL, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98TA123
- 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
- N3186L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Van Nuys Airport (VNY), Van Nuys, CATo NEWHALL, CA
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Santa Clarita, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was making a normal approach to a dry riverbed on a southwesterly heading directly into the sun. He reported that 'moments before I hit the wires, I saw them and made an evasive maneuver to avoid them.' He then clipped the wire with the main rotor blades and as he attempted to turn away, he clipped the tail rotor. The pilot stated that he then flew the helicopter to the ground and made ground contact in a level attitude. The helicopter landed hard and rolled over onto its right side. The series of wires were at a measured height of 39 feet agl and spanned lengthwise approximately 1,200 feet between poles or other markings. The sun and moon position information for the time of the accident showed the sun's position to be at 4.6 degrees above the horizon. The sun's azimuth was at 252 degrees. Official sunset that evening was at 1808.
Probable cause
The failure of the pilot to maintain adequate clearance with the wires. Additional factors in this accident are the position of the sun at that time of the day, which made it difficult to see the wires, and the lack of markings or poles for that series of wires.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98TA123
- Event ID
- 20001211X09729
- Case number
- LAX98TA123
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-03-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2f1548e4860d24fde6f1ecb7ab4c649e9af10dbca526e99314b27df5d7d5f557; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:57:47.528Z.