SEA07LA154 · Bell UH-1B
Bell UH-1B · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Biggs, CA to Biggs, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07LA154
- 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-1B
- 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
- N2087S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Biggs, CATo Biggs, CA
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Maneuvering · hover
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As the helicopter lifted off from the top of a chemical truck the pilot heard a faint whining sound, which got louder and then abruptly stopped when the helicopter had cleared the truck. After the whining stopped, the helicopter flight controls locked up, but despite the restriction the pilot managed to pull a small amount of aft cyclic to help the helicopter settle to the ground. On touchdown the helicopter drifted to the right, then skidded across the ground before experiencing a dynamic rollover. The pilot reported that the hydraulic pump, which supplies hydraulic power to the flight control system servos, failed. A postaccident examination of the hydraulic pump, which sustained impact damage as result of the accident sequence, failed to reveal why the pump had failed. An FAA inspector reported that the hydraulic pump had been removed from a salvaged helicopter in 2000, and had not been used prior to being installed on the accident aircraft, about a month and a half before the accident. The inspector also reported that the pump's condition was unknown and that it was never tested prior to being installed on the helicopter.
Probable cause
Loss of control during hover for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07LA154
- Event ID
- 20070723X00987
- Case number
- SEA07LA154
- 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: f401dd5851fe821a8078f25e6dae09bc53d163aebb15ffcc5235f487ff03c272; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:45:23.586Z.