LAX04TA248 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B · Accident: hard landing
From Van Nuys Airport (VNY) to General William J Fox Airfield (WJF)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04TA248
- 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
- Government
- 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
- N305FD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Van Nuys Airport (VNY), Van Nuys, CATo General William J Fox Airfield (WJF), Lancaster, CA
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Flare, misjudged
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter landed hard and rolled on its side during a practice autorotation. The CFI and pilot-undergoing-instruction (PUI) were practicing a 180-degree autorotation. The PUI rolled out onto final at 400 feet agl. The PUI said that about 70 feet agl he leveled the helicopter, rolled in throttle, and started his flare. About 50 feet agl, he leveled in the flare because the helicopter "did not feel like it was building energy" and was not as effective in the flare. The rotor rpm was at 100 percent. He noted that there seemed to be not enough engine power to recover. He leveled the aircraft to get out of the flare and raised the collective. The low rotor horn sounded shortly after. The helicopter landed hard, bounced, spun around, hit the ground again, and rolled over on its right side. The Los Angeles City Fire Department "flare autorotations" procedure states "At approximately 75 feet from the ground, you begin your flare by applying a smooth pressure on the cyclic, flaring the ship at the right altitude and leveling the ship from a flare require quick but smooth movement of the cyclic...You will lost some altitude coming out of the flare but the ship should be level by the time you reach 10 feet." An engine teardown was conducted, with no anomalies found. The fuel control and governor bench tested to specifications.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudged autorotative flare and the flight instructor's delayed remedial action and inadequate supervision of the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04TA248
- Event ID
- 20040712X00950
- Case number
- LAX04TA248
- 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: 23f1a30107df3f9c4e577060cdbb50dba8079909cc49a8bf0ca4f31109828e5b; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:16:39.411Z.