DEN03LA078 · Bell 206-L4
Bell 206-L4 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From Centennial Airport (APA) to Centennial Airport (APA)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN03LA078
- 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 206-L4
- 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
- N70TV
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Centennial Airport (APA), Englewood, COTo Centennial Airport (APA)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 terrain/water
- 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 › Remedial action, delayed
- Flightcrew › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot-in-command (PIC), the helicopter was returning to Centennial Airport, Englewood, after the crew had filmed a news story. He was allowing the check pilot (CP) to fly the helicopter. The PIC "bumped the throttle" to simulate a power loss. The CP turned into the wind and slowed to 60 knots. The PIC consulted the CP and confirmed the landing location and recovery procedures (i.e., rotor rpm in the green arc, full throttle at 200 feet agl). The CP flared the helicopter 75 feet above the ground but didn't apply power until they were 20 feet above the ground. Rotor speed decayed, and the helicopter struck the ground, bounced, spun 180 degrees, and rolled over on its left side. According to the CP, the PIC initiated a forced landing. He wrote, "I entered the [autorotation] and turned into the wind. During the power recovery, the engine did not respond in a timely manner and ground contact was the result." According to the FAA inspector who interviewed the crew, the CP did not have recent helicopter experience involving operations above 5,000 feet. Due to a lack of prior planning between the two pilots, "the [CP] assumed that the PIC was going to reapply the throttle for a power recovery. At the same time, the [PIC] assumed that the [CP] was going to apply power [to recover]. The result of this lack of CRM (cockpit resource management) was that the power was applied at a point where the descent rate could not be arrested..." At the time of the accident, the helicopter was carrying 400 pounds of fuel, television cameras and other equipment, and a cameraman. The density altitude was computed to be 7,143 feet msl.
Probable cause
inadequate infligt planning/decision by the flight crew and the check pilot's failure to initiate remedial action in a timely manner. Contributing factors were the pilot-in-command's inadequate supervision of the check pilot, the check pilot's lack of recency of high altitude experience, and the high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN03LA078
- Event ID
- 20030513X00651
- Case number
- DEN03LA078
- 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. 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: db918c2eff5ca36c1cdca7002ea362ab8ddf3b2fb0a447d8e61c186372f0273e; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:29:44.869Z.