FTW03LA197 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Burnet Municipal Airport/Kate Craddock Field (BMQ) to Liberty Hill Air Ranch Airport (XS12)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA197
- 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 206B
- 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
- N9877Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Burnet Municipal Airport/Kate Craddock Field (BMQ), Burnet, TXTo Liberty Hill Air Ranch Airport (XS12), Liberty Hill, TX
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire, transmission
- 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
- 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 3,225-hour pilot reported that he was video-filming an automobile driving westbound into the sunset. The pilot further stated that "as we continued down the highway, we came upon the second set of wires before I thought we should have. With the sun in my eyes, I did not see them until maybe a second before we impacted it." The helicopter descended in a slight nose low attitude and impacted the highway, then skidded off the road into a ditch. An examination of the helicopter by an FAA inspector who responded to the accident site revealed that the helicopter caught fire after it came to a stop and was destroyed.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance with the power line. A contributing factor was the sunglare.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA197
- Event ID
- 20030827X01415
- Case number
- FTW03LA197
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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 2003-08-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 27ea7644b831f5974b1d88bf09f4a0e85d98a6ff07b16aa9f06350bd47e118be; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:23:25.590Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative states that "the helicopter caught fire after it came to a stop and was destroyed".