MIA00GA264 · Bell UH-1H
Bell UH-1H · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Macon County Airport (1A5) to Waynesville, NC
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's operation. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00GA264
- 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
- 2 · 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 Possible conflict
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Bell UH-1H
- Aircraft type
- Bell UH-1
- 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
- N525BM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Macon County Airport (1A5), Franklin, NCTo Waynesville, NC
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC); 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to a witness, N525BM, operated by the North Carolina Forest Service, departed Macon County Airport, Franklin, North Carolina, on September 7, 2000, about 0850 into visual flight rules weather. The FAA flight service stations had been promulgating "Airmet Sierra" warning of low ceilings and mountain obscurations for the Franklin/Waynesville area from 2000 of the night of September 6, 2000, to 1000 of the morning of September 7. The flight followed highway 23/74 to Sylva, continuing toward Waynesville's Haywood County Mountain Research Station where the rotorcraft, its onboard fire fighting equipment, and crew were to serve as a static display for school children. About 5 minutes out, the pilot radioed the Haywood County Forest Ranger who had the landing zone secured for his arrival that he would put the rotorcraft down and wait for unexpected fog to lift. Residents in West Waynesville saw and heard the rotorcraft try to pick its way in very heavy ground fog. The rotorcraft collided with trees in mountainous terrain south of West Waynesville at the 4,400-foot level. Examination at the crash site and factory examinations of the engine and rotor mast revealed no precrash mechanical malfunctions. Use of over-the-counter pharmaceutical compounds of cold and allergy medicines were found in toxicological testing of specimens of the pilot.
Probable cause
An in-flight encounter with ground level fog due to the pilot's decision to continue VMC flight into instrument conditions, resulting in an in-flight collision with trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00GA264
- Event ID
- 20001212X22031
- Case number
- MIA00GA264
- 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, coordinates. 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: 13bcbfa0a254c761ebb270ec02ab1caffcb2cfd45c41e8f660cc3a3987c8259b; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:52:45.755Z.