CJ System Aviation Group Bell 430 accident
Bell 430 · Accident: in flight collision with object while taxiing
From Ummc Heliport (MI32) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI03LA084
- 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
- 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 430
- Aircraft type
- Bell 430
- 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
- N431UM
- Operator
- CJ System Aviation Group
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ummc Heliport (MI32), Ann Arbor, MITo 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 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
- Taxi · aerial
- 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
- 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
The helicopter was substantially damaged when the tail rotor impacted a roadway sign while repositioning at night for departure. The medical evacuation flight had landed on a roadway to pick-up a patient. The medical crew had departed the helicopter prior to the reposition. The pilot was the only occupant on-board at the time. The pilot reported he began to taxi. He stated he "cleared the tail to move left into the turn around along M-59. I started to move the aircraft which now was facing south into M-59 ... when the tail rotor hit a steel reflector post. The aircraft became airborne to around five or six feet when I lowered the collective and rolled the throttles to idle to stop the aircraft rotation." The aircraft impacted on the left rear skid first and came to rest one-hundred eightly degrees from its initial heading. A post-accident examination revealed the tail rotor and gearbox had departed the helicopter. The pilot reported there were no mechanical malfunctions with the helicopter prior to the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance to the roadway sign. Contributing factors were the failure of the tail rotor gearbox, the roadway sign and the low lighting conditions (night).
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI03LA084
- Event ID
- 20030327X00404
- Case number
- CHI03LA084
- 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 2003-03-17.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 86c947a9b8e967b18e999380a57a766c2da6c789d876586ae5970ed696c58d1e; retrieved 2026-09-18T15:53:58.216Z.