SEA03LA012 · Bell 212
Weyerhaeuser Bell 212 · Accident: in flight collision with object during landing
From Longview, WA to Longview, WA
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA012
- 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 212
- Aircraft type
- Bell 212
- 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
- N82W
- Operator
- Weyerhaeuser
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Longview, WATo Longview, WA
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Pilot in command › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the operator, the pilot was landing the helicopter, equipped with a long-line and external fertilizer bucket, at a heliport located approximately 2 miles from the departure point. The operator reported that the pilot made a normal external load approach (from the northeast) and landed the bucket from a hover. After landing the bucket, ground crew personnel directed the pilot to reposition it forward of its present position due to the buckets proximity to a tree stump. After repositioning the bucket to the requested location, the pilot maneuvered the helicopter laterally and started a descent for landing. During the descent, the helicopter's main rotor blades made contact with treetops.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from trees while landing. A contributing factor was trees.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA012
- Event ID
- 20021204X05564
- Case number
- SEA03LA012
- 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: 2cfe2ec6b44d38e892dbb73ac06066e2238348f255bf389ba477a17f38138a0f; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:54:38.180Z.