ATL07CA122 · Bell 206B
Ocean Helicopters Bell 206B · Accident: nose down during landing
From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL07CA122
- 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 206B
- 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
- N100RW
- Operator
- Ocean Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45), West Palm Beach, FLTo not recorded
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Nose down
- 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(cfi) › Throttle/power control, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the Flight Instructor, "the flight was concluding a training flight. The final exercise was a demonstration of an autorotation to a powered recovery. The entry and glide were normal. During the flare the throttle was opened to reinstate the engine power. At this point I was aware that I did not have sufficient power to bring the aircraft to a hover. I leveled the aircraft and prepared for a touch down autorotation. Contact with the ground was level but with some forward movement. The grass runway was soft due to recent rainfall and as a result the front of the skids dug into the runway bringing the aircraft to a sudden stop. The helicopter tipped forward with some force resulting in the mast tipping forward and the blade flexing down. As the blade rotated to the rear of the aircraft it came into contact with the tail boom and severed the tail rotor drive shaft. The aircraft did remain upright and level and I was able to perform a normal shut down. We then exited the aircraft to inspect the damage." The Flight Instructor further stated that "I should have opened the throttle prior to the [flare] in order to give the engine more time to recover before pulling pitch. I was simply late bringing the power back in." The Flight Instructor reported no engine or mechanical malfunction or failures.
Probable cause
The flight Instructor's delayed activation of the throttle during recovery from a demonstartion of an autorotation resulting in touchdown on soft terrain and a nosedown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL07CA122
- Event ID
- 20070911X01361
- Case number
- ATL07CA122
- 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: 5aa7c11a53eaa6ec9f53ad2b6f823a558752e76c666956ef24310a3ae5d4d116; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:29:12.037Z.