LAX08CA229 · Bell 47G-3B-1
Slykerman Ag Aviation Bell 47G-3B-1 · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) while maneuvering
From Shafter, CA (no airport) to Shafter, CA (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08CA229
- 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 47G-3B-1
- Aircraft type
- Bell 47
- 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
- N1390X
- Operator
- Slykerman Ag Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Shafter, CA (no airport)To Shafter, CA (no airport)
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- Defining eventThe 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
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 reported that a few minutes after taking off for a nighttime agricultural spray flight over an alfalfa field, the ground illumination lights in his helicopter went out. At the time, he was descending and maneuvering close to the ground on a spray run. The pilot reported that he did not see the field before impacting it with the spray boom. The helicopter rolled over and was substantially damaged.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate altitude while maneuvering. Contributing factors were the failure of the helicopter's lights during the night flight and the effect of that failure on the pilot's visual perception.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08CA229
- Event ID
- 20080815X01253
- Case number
- LAX08CA229
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2008-07-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 76fc78e70aae3c0edfee60547045d2ebc5773eb1574158998f9f4fe07352696c; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:04:00.719Z.