FTW02LA216 · Bell TH-13T
Bell TH-13T · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From New Iberia, LA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW02LA216
- 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 TH-13T
- Aircraft type
- Bell TH-13
- 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
- N99628
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From New Iberia, LATo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
After the pilot had finished spraying his load and was en route to the loading facility, he noticed that he had 15 gallons of fuel remaining. Approximately 1 minute later the helicopter experienced a complete loss of engine power. Subsequently, an autorotation was initiated over a sugar cane field. Prior to contacting the high vegatation, the pilot flared by adding full aft cyclic and up collective, resulting in the main rotor blades striking and severing the tail boom, the tail rotor separating, and the helicopter coming to rest in a upright position. There was no post-impact fire. The cause of the loss of power was not determined.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. High vegetation was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW02LA216
- Event ID
- 20020726X01217
- Case number
- FTW02LA216
- 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: 9f3f634f8d0f07a693d43919702e3f8a47d046d44662ae838cb80c3065fc7e61; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:42:54.543Z.