MIA05FA055 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during initial climb
From Bonifay, FL to Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA05FA055
- 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
- 1 · 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 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
- N35BA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bonifay, FLTo Lakeland Linder International Airport (LAL), Lakeland, FL
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Climb, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Descent, continued
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A witness, the pilot's wife, who was watching the takeoff stated that the helicopter had been parked overnight and immediately prior to departure her husband used the garden hose and washed the windscreen with water. He then embarked the helicopter, started the engine, lifted into a hover, taxied, and initiated a normal takeoff. She said she watched the takeoff, and at an altitude of about 75 to 100 feet the helicopter assumed a slight nose low descending attitude and suddenly impacted the ground. She said that the helicopter descended impacting hard on its skids, but mainly on the right skid, and it fell over on the right side, momentarily rolled inverted, and then rolled back on the right side. She said that the helicopter had been operating normally, and she did not hear any unusual noises, or observe any erratic movement associated with the helicopter, and that all she saw initially prior to the impact was a gradual nose low right side low, but faster than normal descent. She said it was not the usual gentle movements she had become used to observing her husband perform countless times before when landing or taking off in the helicopter. A second witness, said that he was standing at the edge of the driveway when the helicopter was about 100 feet in the air, and he heard a loud "pop" noise, saw a momentary blaze of fire, and then the helicopter nosed over, and descended impacting the ground upside down. Postcrash examination of the helicopter and its systems did not reveal any preaccident anomalies.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain a climb after takeoff and his continued descent which resulted in an in-flight collision with the ground. A factor in the accident was the dark night.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA05FA055
- Event ID
- 20050210X00170
- Case number
- MIA05FA055
- 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: 6b0aeb6657fa584efe7b9aa2088018d8e0147710269d4d05bfa8b0c553b0f58b; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:07:40.471Z.