IAD01LA041 · Bell BH-206-B
Bell BH-206-B · Accident: roll over during landing
From Danville Regional Airport (DAN) to Ringgold, VA (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD01LA041
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 BH-206-B
- Aircraft type
- Bell BH-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
- N17HA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Danville Regional Airport (DAN), Danville, VATo Ringgold, VA (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
- Landing
- 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
- Roll over
- 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 control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Dynamic rollover, initiated
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot/owner prepared to land on an estimated 7 degree slope with the right/uphill skid first. When the right skid made contact with the ground, the helicopter began to rock back and forth longitudinally. The pilot then lifted the helicopter back up into the air, but it nosed forward. To counteract the nose down attitude, the pilot applied aft cyclic, but it did not arrest the situation. The pilot was then concerned about striking trees that were directly in front of him, so he "dropped" the collective to set the helicopter down again. However, the helicopter landed on the front part of the skids, and rolled over onto its nose, and came to rest on its left side. According to Advisory Circular 90-87-Helicopter Dynamic Rollover, "During normal or slope take-offs and landings with the same degree of bank angle or side drift with one skid on the ground, the bank angle or side drift can place the helicopter in a situation where it is pivoting (rolling) about a skid, which is still in contact with the ground. When the uphill slope skid hits the ground, the dynamics of the motion can cause the helicopter to bounce off the upslope skid, and the inertia can cause the helicopter to roll about the downslope ground contact point and over onto its side. The collective should not be pulled suddenly to get airborne, as a large and abrupt rolling moment in the opposite direction will result. This movement can be uncontrollable. If the helicopter develops a roll rate with one skid on the ground, the helicopter can roll over on its side." The pilot reported that there were no mechanical deficiencies.
Probable cause
pilot's failure to properly control the helicopter during a slope landing, which resulted in a dynamic rollover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD01LA041
- Event ID
- 20010419X00778
- Case number
- IAD01LA041
- 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: 8404f23a60c5458cfe558d5c4808c5b19c44abf430a2db2bca151a3d2c679f76; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:59:18.463Z.