LAX03LA197 · Bell 47-G4
Bell 47-G4 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Porterville, CA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03LA197
- 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
- 1 · 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 47-G4
- Aircraft type
- Bell 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
- N9017N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Porterville, CATo 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering · aerial application
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- 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
While en route to a field for an aerial pesticide application, the helicopter pitched nose down and impacted the ground. Two roads ran perpendicular to the accident site; one ran east/west, and the other ran north/south. The pilot departed from a service truck in a southwest direction. The destination field was 2 miles southwest of the service truck. As the pilot crossed the east/west road, he made a wide, left turn, traveling northbound. At the intersection of the two roads, the helicopter maneuvered up and over power lines that were parallel to the east/west road. The helicopter turned left about 90 degrees (west), followed by another left turn of 90 degrees (south). The nose suddenly pitched down, and the helicopter impacted the ground. The wreckage site was 1/2 block north from the intersection of the two roads. Post examination of the airframe and engine did not reveal any preimpact anomalies.
Probable cause
loss of control for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03LA197
- Event ID
- 20030618X00893
- Case number
- LAX03LA197
- 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: 72a08d3b1e7b89e2ee33da5dccd73ff7b054d01cd59c68fa9a1e45e5074eb94d; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:10:01.710Z.