MIA03LA104 · Brantly B-2B
Brantly B-2B · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA03LA104
- 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
Brantly B-2B
- Aircraft type
- Brantly B-2
- 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
- N2141U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA), Lantana, FLTo 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Rotor RPM, 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 hovering when it descended and collided with the ground. The pilot/owner stated that the accident occurred during an orientation flight, and as he took off, he had about 21 gallons of fuel on board. He said that along with the fuel and he and his passenger the helicopter was slightly over weight for the density altitude. He said that all they could do were some hovering maneuvers until enough fuel had been expended and the weight was reduced. He stated that he performed maneuvers while demonstrating how difficult it was to hold rotor rpm, and subsequently turned the helicopter controls over to the pilot-rated passenger, later taking control of the helicopter only when the crash was imminent. The pilot rated passenger stated that he met the pilot/owner of the accident helicopter on the day of the accident, and the pilot/owner invited him to go for a ride. He said he was seated in the left seat, and the pilot/owner was seated in the right seat, and that the pilot/owner was the one flying the helicopter. Information supplied by the pilot/owner showed that he had possessed a commercial rotorcraft certificate, and had accumulated a total of 139 rotorcraft flight hours in the same make and model as the accident helicopter. The pilot-rated passenger possessed a rotorcraft instructor rating and at the time of the accident, said he had a total of 950 total rotorcraft flight hours, of which 6 flight hours were in a Bell 206. The pilot rated passenger's remaining flight hours were in Robinson helicopters. The passenger stated that the accident flight was his first time in a Brantly helicopter.
Probable cause
The pilot/owner's failure to maintain rotor rpm which resulted in a loss of control. Contributing factors were high gross weight and high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA03LA104
- Event ID
- 20030513X00649
- Case number
- MIA03LA104
- 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: 6d3d97fab40c50ffbdfeb09bd0e76530b99fcbef161e2353b0fe8125407459bf; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:29:52.032Z.