LAX00LA343 · Bell 206BIII
Bell 206BIII · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Oxnard Airport (OXR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA343
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 206BIII
- 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
- N90214
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oxnard Airport (OXR), Oxnard, CATo 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- 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 › Loss of tail rotor effectiveness, encountered
- Pilot in command › Rotation, uncontrolled
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was flying personnel to several flood control monitoring stations. After landing to the west on a ridgeline at an elevation about 5,000 feet, the pilot decided to reposition closer to the station. He hover taxied to his landing area. As the skids touched down, the pilot felt the helicopter slide to the right. He picked back up into a hover and decided to fly back to the original landing site. After applying takeoff power, he pushed the nose of the helicopter over and began to fly away downslope. The nose of the helicopter began to rotate to the right, even with full left pedal applied. The pilot reduced collective and continued downslope. As the nose continued to the right, he increased collective, and began to follow the right yaw with cyclic. He flew the helicopter to a downwind position approximately abeam his landing site. Then the nose tucked down and the tail swung to the left. He reduced collective and throttle as the helicopter crash-landed into the slope below his landing site. The air temperature was 85 degrees Fahrenheit, the density altitude was about 8,000 feet, and the winds were from 240 degrees at 5 knots.
Probable cause
the pilot encountered a loss of tail rotor effectiveness which led to an uncontrolled rotation and subsequent hard landing. Factors were unfavorable wind conditions, density altitude, and uneven terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA343
- Event ID
- 20001212X22017
- Case number
- LAX00LA343
- 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: abd66e1fdcaa2c785b0cdb69a15a6ac10041068072d9eb1746d8da8ca1e96fd0; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:24:45.050Z.