NYC00LA044 · Bell 47G
Bell 47G · Accident: in flight collision with object during takeoff
From No airport to Glen Rock, PA (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC00LA044
- 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 47G
- Aircraft type
- Bell 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
- N940B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo Glen Rock, PA (no airport)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot with a passenger, landed the helicopter in a clearing that was about 40 feet wide, by 150 feet long, and surrounded by 'very tall trees.' The pilot said he made a normal run-up and lifted the helicopter to a hover. He used full throttle and maintained 3,100 RPM. When the helicopter started to accelerate forward, at about 12-15 knots, the RPM dropped to 3,000 and the pilot lowered collective to keep the RPM from dropping further. The helicopter's main rotor blades contacted a pine tree about 30 feet above the ground. The helicopter then rolled to the left and impacted the ground. The elevation at the accident site was about 1,800 feet Ms. The pilot did not report any mechanical malfunctions with the helicopter's airframe or engine. After the accident, the pilot stated that the helicopter was with-in it's maximum gross weight; however, the helicopter did not have enough power available to climb and he should have never landed in the clearing.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper preflight planning and decision to attempt a takeoff with the passenger from the confined area.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC00LA044
- Event ID
- 20001212X20168
- Case number
- NYC00LA044
- 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: eeffbacaba1f629220d77ef30c979c7d12b7ef0c4ccae1bf2b6a07c4d0fa03c3; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:37:34.258Z.