SEA91LA251 · Bell BH-47-G3B1
Bell BH-47-G3B1 · Accident: dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid during landing
From Rock Island, WA (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA91LA251
- 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 BH-47-G3B1
- Aircraft type
- Bell BH-47
- 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
- N5474A
- Operator
- Richard H. Butz · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rock Island, WA (no airport)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
- Dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT HOOKED THE ACFT LDG GEAR SKID WHILE LANDING ON A TRAILER AND WAS UNABLE TO FREE THE SKID. HE ABANDONED THE RUNNING ACFT, WHICH ROLLED OFF THE TRAILER AND DOWN AN EMBANKMENT. THE ACFT WAS DESTROYED BY IMPACT AND A POST IMPACT FIRE.
Probable cause
THE FAILURE OF THE PILOT TO USE THE PROPER TOUCHDOWN POINT WHILE LANDING ON A TRAILER.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA91LA251
- Event ID
- 20001212X18211
- Case number
- SEA91LA251
- 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 1991-09-26.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 83cd6e46dfbe991067b8a48d642b00f14ce8a50fbcba05e06f9ec799964295d0; retrieved 2026-09-23T03:39:24.722Z.