FTW04LA117 · Bell 407
Bell Training Academy Bell 407 · Accident: dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid during landing
From OTE2 · Hurst, TX to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW04LA117
- 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 407
- Aircraft type
- Bell 407
- 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
- N407BP
- Operator
- Bell Training Academy
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From OTE2 · Hurst, TXTo 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
- 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
- Dragged wing, rotor, pod, float or tail/skid
- 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
- Dual student › Flare, excessive
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a recurrent training flight, the 1,413-hour commercial pilot who was receiving the training, and was at the controls, initiated a full-touchdown practice autorotation in the single engine helicopter. During the landing "flare," just prior to touchdown, the helicopter’s pitch attitude became "excessively" nose high. Subsequently, the tailboom stinger struck the ground, which resulted in structural damage to the tailboom. The 13,200-hour CFI stated that he was "unable to correct the aircraft attitude" before the stinger struck the ground. The helicopter was operating normally during the flight, and post-accident examination of the flight controls did not reveal anomalies that could have contributed to the accident.
Probable cause
The student pilot's excessive flare prior to touchdown during the practice autorotation which resulted in the tailboom stinger striking the ground. A contributing factor was the flight instructor's delay to take remedial action.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW04LA117
- Event ID
- 20040430X00538
- Case number
- FTW04LA117
- 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: 6234a9056c131d06a33808589debc731b6ebd75d66587d8d89cde5a2d55acf87; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:39:36.342Z.