DFW05LA019 · Bell 206L1
Bell 206L1 · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS) to Cushing Municipal Airport (CUH)
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW05LA019
- 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 206L1
- 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
- N1075P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tulsa Riverside Airport (RVS), Sapulpa, OKTo Cushing Municipal Airport (CUH), Cushing, OK
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Door, cargo/baggage › Unlatched
- Rotor drive system, tail rotor drive shaft › Foreign object damage
- Rotor system, tail rotor blade › Blade strike
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 2,000-hour helicopter pilot reported that after an uneventful departure, and while at an altitude of approximately 500-800 feet and an airspeed of 90 knots, he heard a loud "bang." Following this "bang," tail rotor effectiveness was lost, and the helicopter was forced into a sideways, nose-down attitude The pilot performed an autorotation and made a hard landing into a field. A "dusk" light condition prevailed, and the helicopter came to rest on its left side. Examination of the wreckage by the FAA inspector, who responded to the accident site, revealed that some of the fly-away items and some medical supplies, normally stored in the baggage compartment, were found scattered along the route of flight short of the main wreckage. Examination of the baggage compartment door revealed that both door latches were unlatched, and the door was partially open. Further examination of the tail rotor drive shaft revealed a torsional fracture of the tail rotor drive shaft. Frayed fibers and material consistent with clothing or a blanket were found throughout the tail rotor assembly and tail rotor hub. The pilot reported that there were two oxygen containers in the cargo compartment that were stacked on one another and reached approximately the same height as the latch release button on the interior side of the baggage compartment door.
Probable cause
The loss of tail rotor drive as a result of a blanket coming in contact with the tail rotor blades, after the baggage compartment door unlatched during flight. A contributing factor was the "dusk" light condition that prevailed at the time of the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW05LA019
- Event ID
- 20041110X01808
- Case number
- DFW05LA019
- 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: 6128638dd8505d038b692493a1b935a297e1bbe94974ac5a6e46fe7346ac07ce; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:06:36.153Z.