FTW02LA117 · Bell 206B
Sky One Helicopters Bell 206B · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Dallas Love Field (DAL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02LA117
- 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 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
- N513FD
- Operator
- Sky One Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dallas Love Field (DAL), Dallas, TXTo 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, installation, improper
- Fuel system, pc line › Loose part/bolt/nut/clamp/etc
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During cruise flight, approximately 400 feet agl, the helicopter experienced a "sudden" loss of power. The pilot initiated an autorotation to a residential street. During the forced landing, the main rotor blades struck trees that over hung the street. Subsequently, the helicopter touched down "hard" and slid to a stop. An examination of the helicopter revealed the B-nut on the PC pneumatic line from the power turbine governor tee fitting to the fuel control, at the fuel control end, was backed off from the fitting. When viewed initially, the B-nut appeared to be connected, but when moved by hand, it dislodged from the fuel control connection. Further examination revealed the whole engine was void of the required torque striping on all B-nuts. Examination of the maintenance records revealed the helicopter accumulated 42.6 hours since the last 100-hour maintenance inspection that was performed on March 29, 2002.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power as a result of the backing off of the PC air line "B" nut due to the improper installation by the company maintenance personnel. Contributing factors were the inadequate preflight by the pilot and the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02LA117
- Event ID
- 20020412X00503
- Case number
- FTW02LA117
- 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: c93442bc76f85af5d61193eeb8ab493b23ce34aea92c3ace7c442fa75350982b; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:45:03.653Z.