CHI99LA033 · Brantly Helicopter B2B
Brantly Helicopter B2B · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From Salem–Leckrone Airport (SLO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA033
- 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
Brantly Helicopter B2B
- Aircraft type
- Brantly B2
- 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
- N2291U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salem–Leckrone Airport (SLO)To 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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 terrain/water
- 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
- Faa inspector › Supervision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not obtained/maintained
- Pilot in command › Emergency procedure, simulated
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A Brantly-B2B helicopter was substantially damaged during landing on a recreational pilot certificate check ride when the pilot-in-command attempted a hovering autorotation from an altitude of approximately 2-1/2 to 3 feet. The pilot reported, '...We touched down level with a slight left side drift. I was beginning to pull the collective after touch down when the helicopter rotated about the left skid.' The Federal Aviation (FAA) Inspector conducting the check ride reported, '...I briefed (the pilot) that I would be near the controls during the maneuver'. During the maneuver, the helicopter drifted to the left and contacted the ground with its left skid. The helicopter then rolled over. The FAA Inspector stated that he did not have any flight time in a Brantly-B2B. Inspection of the helicopter revealed no mechanical anomalies.
Probable cause
The simulated emergency procedure by the pilot-in-command. Additional causes were the directional control not obtained/maintained by the pilot-in-command and the inadequate supervision by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Inspector. A contributing factor was the FAA Inspector's lack of familiarity with the aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA033
- Event ID
- 20001211X11388
- Case number
- CHI99LA033
- 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: 1cced0bf233411b84380be0cb3125a474339d0250e35c3bb4b6513b60e8bd41e; retrieved 2026-09-22T16:17:22.348Z.