NYC04LA039 · Bell 206B
Horsham Valley Airways Bell 206B · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Rhode Island T. F. Green International Airport (PVD) to Rhode Island T. F. Green International Airport (PVD)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04LA039
- 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
- N90013
- Operator
- Horsham Valley Airways
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rhode Island T. F. Green International Airport (PVD), Providence, RITo Rhode Island T. F. Green International Airport (PVD)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 › Loss of tail rotor effectiveness, inadvertent
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was performing a series of passes for a ground camera, at an altitude of about 350 feet AGL, and an indicated airspeed of 20 to 25 knots. Three passes were completed into the wind with no problems. On the fourth pass, the pilot noticed the wind had changed from a headwind to a 90 degree left crosswind of about 10 to 15 knots. At the same time, the nose of the helicopter drifted right and he was unable to regain control prior to ground impact. A check of the FAA Advisory Circular on Unanticipated Right Yaw revealed the wind change placed the helicopter in situation where he was susceptible to loss of tail rotor effectiveness (LTE).
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent encounter with loss of tail rotor effectiveness. A factor was the wind change.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04LA039
- Event ID
- 20031205X01996
- Case number
- NYC04LA039
- 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: 165cb89cdde873fb01f73649f4d42a30d1b041586604f00b7da13749e32b660c; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:19:07.258Z.