LAX00LA100 · Bell 47G5
Greenbelt Aviation Bell 47G5 · Accident during takeoff
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA100
- 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 47G5
- 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
- N4754R
- Operator
- Greenbelt Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › Aircraft service, not verified
- Pilot in command › Directional control, restricted
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot had landed to refill the aircraft's hopper from a truck-mounted re-supply tank. After refilling the hopper, the ground support person did not remove the loading hose from the hopper and the pilot did not verify that the hose had been removed before takeoff. After takeoff, the helicopter was pulled to the left as the hose became taught and finally snapped. The pilot applied right pedal to regain forward attitude but the helicopter lost main rotor speed and abruptly settled to the ground. The main rotor blades flapped down, striking the ground, and shattering the cockpit bubble. The lower Sprague system separated as the aircraft contacted the ground, shifting the main rotor mast. This shift moved the fuel tank and ruptured the main fuel line. The fuel spilled onto the exhaust system, resulting in a fire.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to verify that ground personnel had disconnected the loading hose from the hopper before takeoff, resulting in restricted directional control and a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA100
- Event ID
- 20001212X20518
- Case number
- LAX00LA100
- 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 2000-02-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: b81876bce94558bd0f4aebc4644357cd94d28f41c4efed2011518a51321a1d9c; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:11:46.141Z.