LAX06CA296 · Bell 47G
Arrow Aviation Bell 47G · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From Rancho Murieta Airport (RIU) to RIU
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06CA296
- 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
- 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
- N7762
- Operator
- Arrow Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rancho Murieta Airport (RIU), Rancho Murieta, CATo RIU
- 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
- 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 › Compensation for wind conditions, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Proper glidepath, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Translational lift, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an approach to land on a flat clear-cut plateau near a local vineyard, the wind shifted and the helicopter landed hard coming to rest on its left side. The pilot noted various obstacles at the approach end of the landing zone; two trees about 50 feet apart from each other, which he intended to fly between, a 6-foot-high mound, followed by a 2-foot hole, and another 2-foot mound, and then a flat area with no additional obstacles. On the approach, the wind shifted from a headwind to a tail wind. The pilot reported that the airspeed dropped below ETL (effective translational lift) and resulted in a loss of lift. He pushed the cyclic forward to gain forward airspeed and applied cyclic and power to avoid contacting the terrain below the top of the plateau. This maneuver assisted in gaining altitude, placing the helicopter above the plateau, but not above the 6-foot mound. He flared the helicopter, and as it passed over the mound, the tail rotor guard struck the top of the mound, which placed the helicopter in a nose down attitude. One of the landing gear skids collided with the 2-foot mound, which broke off the tailboom. At that point, the helicopter yawed to the right and started to roll to the left, and came to rest about 5 feet from the mound, lying on its left side.
Probable cause
a hard landing due to the pilot's inadequate compensation for a wind shift encountered on final approach and his failure to maintain an adequate translational lift airspeed.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06CA296
- Event ID
- 20061115X01679
- Case number
- LAX06CA296
- 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: 6b9fc1440359c2944d85f2a5d37da38e285e2b82d785b5400f7b31bf25b6e83b; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:25:17.372Z.