CHI02FA288 · Bell 206L-1
Bell 206L-1 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Avera St. Luke's Hospital Heliport (SD54) to Avera Heart Hospital of South Dakota Heliport (2SD6)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI02FA288
- 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
- 4 · 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 206L-1
- 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
- N400SL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Avera St. Luke's Hospital Heliport (SD54), Aberdeen, SDTo Avera Heart Hospital of South Dakota Heliport (2SD6), Sioux Falls, SD
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 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
- Company/operator management › Remedial action, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter was destroyed when it impacted terrain during an emergency medical service flight. The accident occurred during a dark night, in a sparsely populated area with no lighted ground references. Marginal visual flight rules conditions prevailed along the route of flight. The pilot had a documented history of having difficulty flying at night without lighted ground references. The company base and safety managers reported the pilot's night flying deficiency to the company chief pilot. The chief pilot subsequently evaluated the pilot during a night flight. After the evaluation flight, the chief pilot decided to increase the pilot's nighttime weather minimums for a period of 25 night hours as he gained night experience. The accident flight occurred on the pilot's fourth night mission after being evaluated by the chief pilot. Inspection of the helicopter wreckage did not reveal any evidence of a pre-impact malfunction. A review of the helicopter's daily usage logs indicated that there were no unresolved maintenance discrepancies. The pilot who flew the helicopter prior to the accident flight did not report any malfunctions.
Probable cause
Pilot spatial disorientation while flying in dark night conditions, resulting in a loss of aircraft control; and the company's inadequate remedial actions after identifying the pilot's night flying deficiency over areas without lighted references. A factor to the accident was the dark night conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI02FA288
- Event ID
- 20020927X05236
- Case number
- CHI02FA288
- 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 2002-09-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: d11cca5f6765a7bb9f44e98a9d5107a348e936266e849cfc3afaa2f9e9e5e1d7; retrieved 2026-09-18T13:04:06.678Z.