IAD03LA042 · Bell BHT-47-G3B2A
Bell BHT-47-G3B2A · Accident: loss of engine power while taxiing
From Lexington, KY (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD03LA042
- 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 BHT-47-G3B2A
- Aircraft type
- Bell BHT-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
- N47SN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lexington, KY (no airport)To 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 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
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About 20 minutes into the flight, the pilot noticed an occasional "shuffle", or what felt like an "out of balance condition", and decided to return to land. As he approached the landing site, a dolly about 15 feet away, the engine lost power and the helicopter settled to the ground with the engine running. The pilot checked all the gauges for any abnormal indication, and the engine responded to throttle travel, so he lifted to a hover and started to move toward the dolly. When the helicopter was halfway over the dolly, there were more oscillations and it became harder to control. The helicopter then started to drift to the left, and the engine lost power. The pilot was unable to stop the drift or the descent. As the helicopter touched down, the left skid collapsed and the helicopter slid, rolled onto its left side, and came to rest against a fence. Examination of the helicopter revealed no mechanical deficiencies.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control while maneuvering to land after a loss of engine power. A factor was the loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD03LA042
- Event ID
- 20030414X00493
- Case number
- IAD03LA042
- 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: 1a0b7d2926ace96da926bd7ad8185daa6a3987b39efe07fcad83edeb46a476c5; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:28:15.727Z.