DEN07LA142 · Bell 206-L4
Air MD Bell 206-L4 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Dodge City, KS to Mullinville, KS
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN07LA142
- 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 206-L4
- 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
- N1813
- Operator
- Air MD
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dodge City, KSTo Mullinville, KS
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire, transmission
- 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 › Rotor RPM, 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
The pilot stated that as he was circling the landing zone, the helicopter felt like it was being "pushed to the northeast and began to shutter." Just as a semi truck passed beneath the helicopter, the pilot stated that the helicopter "went limp" and subsequently the low rotor rpm warning horn activated. The pilot leveled the helicopter from a slight bank and lowered the collective, which silenced the low rotor warning, but the pilot stated that the helicopter "still felt real sluggish." After maneuvering the helicopter away from ground personnel, the helicopter lost power again and the low rotor rpm warning activated a second time. The pilot stated that he set up the helicopter in an autorotative profile and remembers flaring just prior to the initial impact. The pilot stated that he did not lose tail rotor effectiveness. Medical personnel onboard the helicopter stated that during the descent, they noticed power lines and thought that "at out current angle of descent we were going to catch the wires." Several witnesses on the ground stated that as the helicopter passed over the semi truck, it lost control and contacted power lines before impacting the ground. Examination of the wreckage revealed wire damage to the main rotor and tail boom, as well as substantial damage to the fuselage. Further examination of the helicopter disclosed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical anomaly. Weather in the area was reported by local authorities as strong gusty winds.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain main rotor rpm resulting in an uncontrolled descent, collision with transmission wires, and a hard landing. A contributing factor was the tranmission wires.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN07LA142
- Event ID
- 20070824X01235
- Case number
- DEN07LA142
- 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: 1c794ce2e46438d7a2e662621276922c1dd1f02a3ee75c6f1c52c2a71624d19c; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:45:15.607Z.