LAX04TA264 · Bell 212HP
United States Forest Service Bell 212HP · Accident during landing
From Rogers Field (O05) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX04TA264
- 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 212HP
- Aircraft type
- Bell 212
- 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
- N362EH
- Operator
- United States Forest Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rogers Field (O05), Chester, 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
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › Rotorcraft flight controls, improper use of
- Rotor system, main rotor blade › Perforated
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter's main rotor blade made contact with the upper wire cutter device during an attempted landing on a sloped landing zone. Upon arriving at the landing zone, the pilot selected an area to land clear from other aircraft and began the descent toward rough terrain with a slope of about 8 to 9 degrees. As the helicopter settled onto the skids, the nose pitched upward and the helicopter slid backward. The pilot quickly increased the collective and moved the cyclic forward in an effort to reestablish the hover. The helicopter began to stabilize in the hover and the pilot felt a shudder and heard a corresponding thump sound. The pilot landed in a different area and noted that it appeared that a portion of the skid had dug into the terrain. A main rotor blade had impacted the upper wire cutter device, leaving the blade damaged beyond repair. The owner reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter.
Probable cause
the pilot's excessive use of the cyclic and collective controls in response to the helicopter's unexpected rocking motion, which led to a main rotor contact with the upper wire cutter mounted on the cabin roof. A factor in the accident was the rough, sloping nature of the landing zone chosen for the firebase.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX04TA264
- Event ID
- 20040723X01054
- Case number
- LAX04TA264
- 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: 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 2004-05-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0a463ae3d0c97c92d3a2511297f7530a86d88404370c327f1e70df5b9196116e; retrieved 2026-09-18T21:16:50.265Z.