ATL82FKQ12 · Bell/Soloy 47G-3B
Chemaire of Mississippi Bell/Soloy 47G-3B · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Magee, MS to Magee, MS
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL82FKQ12
- 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
- 1 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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/Soloy 47G-3B
- Aircraft type
- Bell/soloy 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
- N8469E
- Operator
- Chemaire of Mississippi
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Magee, MSTo Magee, MS
- 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
- Maneuvering · aerial application
- 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 control in flight
- 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
- Rotorcraft flight control system › Undetermined
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Magee, MS, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE BELL 47G-3B WITH A SOLOY CONVERSION WAS BEING USED TO DEMONSTRATE AN AERIAL APPLICATION SPRAYING TECHNIQUE FOR USE ALONG POWERLINE RIGHT-OF-WAYS. FOR ABOUT 15 TO 20 MINUTES AFTER TAKEOFF, ROUTINE SPRAY RUNS WERE MADE OVER SEVERAL DIFFERENT POWERLINES WHILE USING WATER AS A SPRAY. JUST PRIOR TO THE ACCIDENT, A SPRAY RUN WAS MADE FROM WEST TO EAST WITH A PULL-UP AND TURN-AROUND OVER POWERLINES ALONG THE EAST SIDE OF THE AREA. THE PILOT STATED THAT FOLLOWING THE TURN-AROUND, BOTH THE CYCLIC AND COLLECTIVE FAILED TO RESPOND AND THE HELICOPTER BEGAN TO VIBRATE. HE STATED THE ENGINE WAS PERFORMING SATISFACTORILY AND THE ROTOR RPM WAS NORMAL. WITNESSES STATED THE HELICOPTER REMAINED IN A NOSE DOWN ATTITUDE UNTIL IMPACT. AFTER THE OCCUPANTS WERE REMOVED, THE HELICOPTER BEGAN BURNING. AN EXAMINATION OF THE WRECKAGE REVEALED NO PREIMPACT MALFUNCTION OR FAILURE. DUE TO THE EXTENT OF THE FIRE DAMAGE, NO USEFUL INFORMATION WAS FOUND REGARDING THE FLIGHT CONTROL, HYDRAULIC, OR OTHER SYSTEMS IN THE BODY FRAME AREA.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL82FKQ12
- Event ID
- 20020917X01753
- Case number
- ATL82FKQ12
- 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. 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: d42b7d347881cb6529ec105935f7c35a8fe00325f02efaa0a027e902bf52d7fe; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:28:37.119Z.