CHI99LA334 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From WI to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA334
- 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
- N4010G
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From WITo 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
- Maneuvering · aerial application
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said he took off from the southeast side of a building and flew west. He stated he turned and flew north. He turned right and flew to the east. He said he 'experienced a hard gust of wind on my tail, causing the aircraft to enter a right spin.' He applied full left rudder and the helicopter did not stop its spinning. He stated he lowered 'the nose in an attempt to fly out of the spin, but to no avail again.' The pilot stated, 'I would need to attempt an auto-rotation to a safe landing.' He said that the 'landing was hard and the tail spun and hit two cars in the parking lot.' The pass was done in slow cruise. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions. The pilot checked wind before the flight. The wind was 270 degrees at 15 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate compensation for wind gusts. Factors were the wind gusts and the two vehicles parked nearby.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA334
- Event ID
- 20001212X19710
- Case number
- CHI99LA334
- 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: 8b920184efe9012f707cfe12b9f745a66aa47af3b9edd56cd98d2e54f42b5db7; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:23:58.337Z.