LAX02TA118 · Bell OH-58A
Bell OH-58A · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Chico Regional Airport (CIC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02TA118
- 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 OH-58A
- Aircraft type
- Bell OH-58
- 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
- N487BC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chico Regional Airport (CIC), Chico, CATo 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
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While en route to the helicopter base, the pilot detected a left yaw, followed by a low main rotor speed warning. After he lowered the collective, the main rotor light went out. He glanced at the N1 gage (gas producer tachometer) and noted it at 70 percent and decreasing. No other warning lights were visible on the caution panel. An autorotation was performed to a field and the helicopter touched down hard. During the landing, the main rotor flexed downward and severed the tail boom. The engine was running at idle after the landing and the pilot performed a manual shutdown. An engine examination did not reveal any evidence of preimpact failures. The operator reported that pilots were trained annually on emergency procedures through oral and flight testing. It had been over a year since the pilot's last emergency training. Department pilots were not allowed to practice autorotations without the Chief Pilot on board, or prior written approval. The pilot had not practiced an autorotation in over 1 year prior to the accident.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power for an undetermined reason. Factors in the accident were the pilot's misjudged flare resulting in a hard landing and the lack of recent experience in emergency procedures by the pilot.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02TA118
- Event ID
- 20020402X00444
- Case number
- LAX02TA118
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-03-29.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 012e2a5b1b201521e12838abc0cc0bd57f3213e8047fe160dc4139477dc52407; retrieved 2026-09-22T11:02:33.399Z.