FTW04CA207 · Bell 47G-3B-1
Brazos Helicopters Bell 47G-3B-1 · Accident: hard landing
From McCleannian Co., TX to Temple, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW04CA207
- 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 47G-3B-1
- Aircraft type
- Bell 47
- 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
- N47713
- Operator
- Brazos Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McCleannian Co., TXTo Temple, 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
- 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(cfi) › Flare, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 10,120-hour flight instructor was demonstrating autorotations when the helicopter landed hard and bounced back into the air, as the main rotor blades struck the tail boom. As the helicopter started to rotate, the throttle was reduced and the helicopter landed upright in a field. The flight instructor further stated the wind after the accident was from 350 degrees, approximately 10 knots. Weather reported near the time of the accident was wind from 040 degrees at 6 knots, visibility 10 statue miles, sky condition clear, temperature 84 degrees Fahrenheit, dew point 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and an altimeter setting of 29.94 inches of Mercury. The density altitude was calculated by the NTSB investigator-in-charge to be 2,485 feet mean sea level.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's improper flare, resulting in a hard landing. A contributing factor was the high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW04CA207
- Event ID
- 20040830X01324
- Case number
- FTW04CA207
- 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: 9dbe5ad112602039b61a411ca223ef1155ffbbabf05a2f94f8caf3dc5bbfe38f; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:55:44.640Z.