CHI03LA062 · Bell 206L-1
Bell 206L-1 · Accident: hard landing
From West Plains Regional Airport (UNO) to West Plains Regional Airport (UNO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA062
- 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 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
- N27AE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From West Plains Regional Airport (UNO), West Plains, MOTo West Plains Regional Airport (UNO), West Plains, MO
- 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
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Check pilot › Descent, misjudged
- Check pilot › Flare, abrupt
- Miscellaneous rotorcraft, tail boom › Cut/severed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
At the completion of a simulated autorotation maneuver the main rotor severed the tailboom. The check airman reported that at approximately 20 feet above ground level he "determined the sink rate was excessive" and he decided to perform a "power recovery." The check airman stated, "I repositioned my hand, started opening the throttle while leveling the aircraft and applying a cushioning pitch pull." The helicopter impacted off the left side of the runway with "the skids aligned with the direction of travel slightly aft skid low." The check airman reported, "The aircraft rocked up onto the toes of the skids and I increased collective pitch and applied aft cyclic, when I did the main rotor impacted the tailboom severing it."
Probable cause
The excessive descent rate that required an abrupt flare, resulting in the main rotor severing the tailboom.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA062
- Event ID
- 20030206X00171
- Case number
- CHI03LA062
- 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: 6142b4686a768d34c762fe60c83abe309d13c941d7f4a8ae01068237caacd26d; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:37:59.857Z.