CEN09IA234 · Bell 206L-3
Air Evac EMS Bell 206L-3 · Incident
From Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport (KLBB) to Abilene, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09IA234
- 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
- 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 206L-3
- 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
- N708M
- Operator
- Air Evac EMS
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lubbock Preston Smith International Airport (KLBB), Lubbock, TXTo Abilene, TX
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following the post-flight inspection of a repositioning flight, the pilot noted a crack in the trailing edge of the rotor blade. He had characterized the previous flight as turbulent, but otherwise unremarkable and without any mechanical anomalies. An examination of the main rotor blade revealed a path of interconnected porosity between the lower trailing edge skin, trailing edge strip, and epoxy that allowed for the introduction of moisture and resultant corrosion. The failure was due to insufficient squeeze-out of the epoxy layer between the lower skin and the trailing edge strip during manufacture. The corrosion pit allowed the formation of a fatigue crack with a resultant crack along the blade surface.
Probable cause
The formation and propagation of a fatigue crack in the trailing edge of the main rotor blade due to interconnected porosity and resultant corrosion. The area of interconnected porosity was due to a manufacturing defect which was not detected during the manufacturing process.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09IA234
- Event ID
- 20090402X00628
- Case number
- CEN09IA234
- 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: investigation status. 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: ccb04180455c60fc371416d3e3afc246d4cb0c029fa15279cde5506e8bf012f6; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:53:55.923Z.