FTW02LA044 · Bell 47G
Bell 47G · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Ardmore Downtown Executive Airport (1F0) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02LA044
- 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 47G
- 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
- N5226
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ardmore Downtown Executive Airport (1F0), Ardmore, OKTo 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 · landing roll
- 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
- On ground/water collision with terrain/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(cfi) › Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area, selected
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot had completed three power recovery autorotations to the south, and the flight instructor was to demonstrate a "full touchdown autorotation" to end the training session. The flight instructor initiated the autorotation at 1,500 feet msl and 60 knots to the airport's mid-field median. After slowing to 40 knots, the instructor began a flare to reduce the airspeed to 15-20 knots. At 10 feet agl, he pulled collective to cushion the landing. The helicopter touched down on the soft grassy area and slid for approximately 10 feet before starting to nose over. "The tail of the helicopter pitched upward into the blades, severing it." The helicopter rotated left approximately 270 degrees before coming to rest upright. The flight instructor stated that "weather had saturated the ground and caused the sod to be soft on the usual landing area. It was not visible from the helicopter."
Probable cause
the flight instructor's selection of an unsuitable area for practicing a full touchdown autorotation, which resulted in a nose over. A contributing factor was the soft ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02LA044
- Event ID
- 20011204X02350
- Case number
- FTW02LA044
- 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: 85a78832b5b874975428f244d027bad747524964c960df3ec39e1f4539f7ea36; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:18:01.920Z.