WPR10CA057 · Bell 206B
Leading Edge Aviation Bell 206B · Accident: settling with power/vortex ring state while maneuvering
From Lyons, OR to Lyons, OR
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10CA057
- 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
- N16869
- Operator
- Leading Edge Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lyons, ORTo Lyons, OR
- 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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
- Settling with power/vortex ring state
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was for the pilot to relocate Christmas trees to a nearby drop site. The pilot said that as he was maneuvering the helicopter to the drop site with a load, the helicopter began to settle with power. In reaction he applied more collective to arrest the descent. The helicopter continued to descend and he then attempted to reduce the collective and maneuver forward. The helicopter touched down hard on the heels of the skids and the helicopter's nose came to rest in a pile of Christmas trees. According to the FAA's Rotorcraft Flying Handbook, when recovering from settling with power "the tendency on the part of the pilot is to first try to stop the descent by increasing collective pitch. However, this only results in increasing the stalled area of the rotor, thus increasing the rate of descent" and instead the pilot should recover by "increasing forward speed, and/or partially lowering collective pitch." The pilot stated that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or engine.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent encounter with a vortex ring state (settling with power) condition while he was descending, and his improper initial remedial action.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10CA057
- Event ID
- 20091118X40402
- Case number
- WPR10CA057
- 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: 3bfb9d88bf37137b4e7f134b9b6328fe3587a96c9cebff0e24c6659970705cc2; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:30:04.175Z.