DEN99LA002 · Bell 206B
Enterprise Aviation Bell 206B · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Steamboat Springs Bob Adams Field (SBS) to Skypark Airport (BTF)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99LA002
- 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
- N992SM
- Operator
- Enterprise Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Steamboat Springs Bob Adams Field (SBS), STEAMBOAT SPRGS, COTo Skypark Airport (BTF), Salt Lake City, UT
- 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
- 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, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THIS CASE WAS MODIFIED DECEMBER 20, 2005.
The pilot was attempting to land in a strong quartering tailwind because his passenger had become air sick. He said the helicopter 'was practically in a hover [with] full power applied. . .when a gust of wind from behind hit me just as I was turning into the wind using left pedal. The helicopter weather vaned, I reacted with full right pedal and then the gust either stopped or came from a different direction weather vaning us back to the west where I applied full left pedal. I could feel buffeting in the controls similar to turbulence. The right yaw was so rapid that I entered loss of tail rotor effectiveness.' The helicopter collided with terrain while it was still turning and rolled over. According to the passenger, the pilot had attempted landings earlier in the day but had difficulty with the wind. He succeeded in landing after several attempts.
Probable cause
Loss of tail rotor effectiveness. A factor was the quartering tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99LA002
- Event ID
- 20001211X11236
- Case number
- DEN99LA002
- 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: 54938f0b67d43dc6b77bb7580cff5aef58eb4b6607327a8888698967634d0178; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:34:57.621Z.