CHI00TA306 · Bell 47G-5A
Wayne County Sheriff'S Office Bell 47G-5A · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during landing
From Richmond Municipal Airport (RID) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI00TA306
- 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-5A
- 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
- N14841
- Operator
- Wayne County Sheriff'S Office
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Richmond Municipal Airport (RID), Richmond, INTo 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 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 on ground/water
- 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 › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot lost control of the helicopter and it impacted the terrain on landing. The purpose of the flight was for aerial photography. The pilot reported the winds increased during the flight and he elected to make an off airport landing to take a break and see if the winds would subside. During touchdown, the helicopter tilted rearward. The pilot attempted to recover; however the tailrotor struck the ground and the helicopter became airborne, rotated to the right and reached an altitude of 10 feet to 15 feet. The pilot reduced the collective and closed the throttle at which time the helicopter landed hard. The pilot lost his hold on the collective and it rose from the impact. This caused the helicopter to begin rotating again, however it remained on the ground. The pilot pushed the collective back down and eventually got the engine shut down. The pilot reported that after the accident he checked the area and discovered that the ground had a downhill slope in the area where the rear portion of the skids would have been. He reported that the slope was obscured by grass.
Probable cause
The pilot failed to maintain control of the helicopter while attempting a landing on unsuitable terrain. A factor associated with the accident was the grass covered, down slope in the terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI00TA306
- Event ID
- 20010822X01752
- Case number
- CHI00TA306
- 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: 084b895c8f7d64532e6d36e49b662b6d83f87e3b532ea88b1beeef693234b7b9; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:04:45.221Z.