CJ Systems Aviation Group Bell 407 incident
Bell 407 · Incident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Clinton, MO to Kansas City, MO
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07IA042
- 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
- Incident
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 407
- Aircraft type
- Bell 407
- 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
- N302LE
- Operator
- CJ Systems Aviation Group
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Clinton, MOTo Kansas City, MO
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Turbine assembly, turbine blade › Fatigue
- Turbine assembly, turbine blade › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The air ambulance helicopter executed an emergency landing on an elementary school parking lot following a loss of engine power. Night visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the incident. The pilot stated that he heard a bang and got a low frequency vibration during cruise flight. The helicopter received minor damage due to internal engine components exiting the engine collector and exhaust stack. Examination of the third stage turbine wheel noted high cycle fatigue features on the fracture surface of one of the blades. The fatigue initiated at the trailing edge of the airfoil and propagated 0.515 inch before a fast fracture separation. Although a small area of porosity was observed in the microstructure adjacent to the fracture, it did not intersect the fracture surface, and no evidence of porosity was observed on the fracture surface. Chemistry and hardness were as specified. Given the high cycle features, good material properties, and lack of a stress-concentrating defect at the origin, the fatigue could be secondary to some other event that produced unusual loading or vibrations in the blade.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power during cruise flight due to third stage turbine wheel blade fatigue and subsequent separation, which resulted in an emergency landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07IA042
- Event ID
- 20061222X01842
- Case number
- CHI07IA042
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2006-12-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 34abd728c8b95a9e7890c734142ab1ecfbb02300257fbdc2dabe2b87281f8861; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:48:51.037Z.