CHI99GA155 · Bell OH-58A
Bell OH-58A · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Malden Regional Airport (MAW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99GA155
- 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
- Government
- 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 OH-58A
- Aircraft type
- Bell OH-58
- 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
- N77MP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Malden Regional Airport (MAW), Malden, MOTo 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Object › Other
- Rotor drive system, tail rotor drive shaft › Overload
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Poplar Bluff, MO, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter departed controlled flight while en route to the Poplar Bluff Airport, Poplar Bluff, Missouri. A witness stated that the helicopter appeared to be 450 feet agl. The helicopter was then reported by the witness to have made three to four rotations during its descent. The OH-58A/C lists procedures for the 'COMPLETE LOSS OF TAIL ROTOR THRUST'. Examination of the tail rotor drive shaft revealed a 45-degree torsional fracture. There was rotational scoring near the fracture area on the interior housing for the tail rotor drive shaft. An elastic material with navy blue yarns was found wrapped around the tail rotor. The yarns were consistent with those of a navy blue warm up jacket found along the reported flight path. The helicopter's entry doors were removed for the flight.
Probable cause
The tail rotor's impact with the blue warm-up jacket and the subsequent overload of the tail rotor drive shaft. A contributing factor was the absence of the helicopter's entry doors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99GA155
- Event ID
- 20001212X18711
- Case number
- CHI99GA155
- 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: 278a43e2f5cf2e737a45b10d4df70368dd1965b84934b84cb25a0abef2aad7b5; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:36:46.420Z.