FTW00TA007 · Bell 206B
Texas Dept. of Public Safety Bell 206B · Accident: nose over during landing
From Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport (LBB) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00TA007
- 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
- N21166
- Operator
- Texas Dept. of Public Safety
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport (LBB), Lubbock, TXTo 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
- Nose over
- 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 › Distance/altitude, low
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a 300-foot agl practice 180-degree autorotation, approximately 90 degrees into the turn, the pilot allowed 'a high sink-rate to develop', and began to pull pitch to arrest the descent. The pilot started to 'roll the throttle' open and he observed the N2 and Nr needles join at 92 percent. At this point, the left 180-degree turn was completed, and the aircraft rolled out parallel to and west of the runway with approximately 40 knots indicated airspeed. The pilot continued to roll on throttle and increase the collective in order 'to hold the helicopter about 3 feet above the ground.' However, the 'rotor rpm decreased too low', and the helicopter settled to the ground and slid approximately 60 feet. The left skid toe and lower wire cutter dug into the ground, and the helicopter rocked forward onto the toes of the skids. Subsequently, the main rotor blades contacted and severed the tail boom, and the helicopter rolled over, and came to rest on its left side. The operator stated that 'this maneuver could be entered from a higher agl altitude, this would have prevented the accident.'
Probable cause
The pilot's initiation of the simulated emergency procedure at a low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00TA007
- Event ID
- 20001212X19970
- Case number
- FTW00TA007
- 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: fb9a3e77b1fe28333f1c4cc8f03b9032441b6fbfc63692d09a303074ea17e918; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:57:19.159Z.