CHI00LA204 · Bell 47G-3B-1
Bell 47G-3B-1 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From CAMPBELL, NE to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00LA204
- 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-3B-1
- 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
- N83701
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From CAMPBELL, NETo 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
- 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 › Settling with power, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter impacted the terrain while maneuvering during aerial application flight. In a written statement, the pilot said, "On the third pass at the top of my turn the wind came up strongly from the E-NE and what airspeed I had at the top of the turn dissipated and became a tailwind of approx[imately] 15-20 knots. I was diving back into the field now with a tailwind, out of translational lift and ended up with what I consider to be settling with power. At my current altitude of approx[imately] 50-60 feet I did not have sufficient room to reenter translational lift and contacted the ground." A postaccident examination of the aircraft failed to reveal any anomalies that could be associated with a preexisting condition. A weather reporting station located about 17 miles and 037 degrees magnetic from the accident site reported at 0753 cdt, wind variable at 03 knots. The same reporting station reported at 0853 cdt, wind variable at 03 knots gusting to 19 knots. At 0900 cdt, the reporting station reported thunderstorms in the vicinity
Probable cause
the settling with power encountered by the pilot. A factor was the sudden windshift.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00LA204
- Event ID
- 20001212X21395
- Case number
- CHI00LA204
- 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: 5d5afccb09c2ee26c325b7435add0f20226dcc12772a18ce568d16bc8484108e; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:09:25.998Z.