Central Helicopter Service Bell 222B accident
Bell 222B · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From William P. Hobby Airport (HOU) to Gulf of Mexico, TX
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN09LA252
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 222B
- Aircraft type
- Bell 222
- 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
- N309CH
- Operator
- Central Helicopter Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From William P. Hobby Airport (HOU), Houston, TXTo Gulf of Mexico, 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- 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 during takeoff/landing
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While landing on the “winch only” deck of a ship at anchor in the Gulf of Mexico, the helicopter’s tail rotor struck a valve assembly protruding from the ship’s deck. The helicopter yawed approximately 60 degrees nose-right, then struck the ship’s side rail with the helicopter’s tail and came to rest upright on the deck. There was substantial damage to the helicopter’s fuselage, tail boom, horizontal stabilizer, tail rotor blades, tail rotor hub, and tail rotor gearbox. The pilot and four passengers were not injured and exited the helicopter normally through the doors on the right side of the helicopter. There were no injuries to any of the persons on board the ship.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from obstructions while landing on a shipboard helipad.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN09LA252
- Event ID
- 20090417X91001
- Case number
- CEN09LA252
- 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, 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: 14698b95276c9b3c70baab70f4b689a416d04d9edbe667b6bbbee2d064b5fe03; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:57:08.385Z.