DEN07LA024 · Bell UH-1H
Bell UH-1H · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From East Texas Regional Airport (GGG) to Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN07LA024
- 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 UH-1H
- Aircraft type
- Bell UH-1
- 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
- N24CF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From East Texas Regional Airport (GGG), Longview, TXTo Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ), Albuquerque, NM
- 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
- Rotor system, tail rotor blade › Separation
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 was in cruise flight approximately 600 feet agl (above ground level) when it experienced "moderate to heavy" vibration. The pilot said he knew the tail rotor had failed because the anti-torque pedals would go to the floor with no effect. He also knew the tail rotor had failed when he attempted to make a run-on landing. As they got nearer to the ground, the check pilot "got on the controls" and would not relinquish them. The check pilot pulled back on the cyclic and slowed the helicopter, which immediately started "spinning violently to the right." The pilot-in-command "slammed the collective down" in an attempt to hit the ground hard and turn the helicopter over and stop it from spinning. He tried to roll off the throttle (which is the proper procedure for loss of tail rotor thrust in accordance with the Pilot Operating Handbook), but the check pilot was on the controls and he could not override him. The pilot-in-command turned off the main fuel control in an attempt to shut down the engine and stop the helicopter from spinning. The helicopter impacted terrain and rolled over on its side. Examination of the helicopter revealed both tail rotor blades were missing. The 90-degree gearbox was still attached and the tail rotor drive shaft showed no damage. Despite an extensive search, the tail rotor blades were not recovered. No other anomalies were found.
Probable cause
the in-flight failure and separation of both tail rotor blades. Contributing factors in this accident were the check pilot interferring with the controls and his failure to relinquish control to the pilot-in-command.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN07LA024
- Event ID
- 20061117X01687
- Case number
- DEN07LA024
- 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: 3f551b4cdc9c794f5b4b54df90976473e2a81102b90934510c56daaae9221016; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:53:03.718Z.