LAX01FA306 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Hilo International Airport (ITO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01FA306
- 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
- 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 206B
- 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
- N206KS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hilo International Airport (ITO), Hilo, HITo 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, adjustment, inadequate
- Turbine assembly, shaft bearing › Improperly serviced
- Turbine assembly, shaft › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot made a mayday call, shut off the fuel valve, and performed an autorotation into high grass after the single engine helicopter experienced a loss of engine power shortly after takeoff. The pilot had heard a bang followed by illumination of the engine out warning light, and the engine began smoking. During the terminal phase of the autorotation, the pilot assumed the grass height was 3 feet and flared accordingly; however, the grass was at least 6 feet tall. Post-accident examination of the engine revealed that the No. 1 turbine wheel was missing. The No. 8 bearing thrust nut exhibited a locking indentation and a notch on its inside surface. Additionally, indentations were on the threads of the threaded end of the first stage turbine wheel shaft. These marks suggest that the thrust nut was not fully engaged on the first stage turbine shaft. The location of the notch suggests that the edge of the nut protruded beyond the end of the turbine shaft. There were no indications of contact by the shaft threads on the inner surface of the deformed area to suggest that it had been displaced into a groove on the first stage turbine shaft. Review of the maintenance records and interviews with the mechanic, who performed the most recent maintenance work, revealed that the turbine section had been replaced approximately 30 hours prior to the accident. Due to excessive oil consumption, maintenance personnel removed the turbine and replaced the No. 5 carbon seal approximately 14 hours prior to the accident. The maintenance records indicated that the day before the accident, the sump cover had been removed for trouble shooting oil consumption. Though it is not detailed in the maintenance entry, it is interpreted that the "sump cover" referred to is the No. 8 Bearing sump nut since the thrust nut was loose.
Probable cause
The failure of the mechanic to secure the No. 8 bearing thrust nut during maintenance work, which resulted in the total failure of the first stage turbine wheel shaft. Also causal was his misjudgment of his height during the flare resulting in a hard landing. A contributing factor was the high vegetation in the forced landing field, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01FA306
- Event ID
- 20011002X02024
- Case number
- LAX01FA306
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2001-09-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 37e295911bbc9b2f02a799ddd1ca59878b83ad02367587c89ca000302c4d09d8; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:09:16.797Z.