PHI Bell 206L-3 incident
Bell 206L-3 · Incident: flight control system malfunction/failure en route
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10IA314
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
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
- N108PH
- Operator
- PHI
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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 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
- En route
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and his two passengers were in cruise flight over the Gulf of Mexico, when the pilot heard a "pop", and the single-engine helicopter suddenly pitched over and to the right. The pilot lowered the collective and stabilized the helicopter. The engine was running normally, but there was no response from the anti-torque pedals, and the pilot realized he had a possible tail rotor failure. He entered an autorotation and made a controlled landing on the top of a swell. As the helicopter settled, the pilot noticed that the center emergency float on the right side did not inflate and the helicopter rolled to the right. The pilot did not have time to activate the emergency life raft switch and exited the helicopter once it was fully inverted. While still under water, he inflated his life vest and immediately rose to the surface where he observed the two passengers. The three of them then held onto the skids of the helicopter and waited for a nearby boat to rescue them. While waiting for the boat, the pilot did a quick check of the helicopter and saw there was no damage to the underside of the tail boom.
During the rescue, a tug boat arrived on the scene and attempted to secure the helicopter with ropes and drag it to a nearby barge. It was during this attempt in rough seas that the tail boom and the aft portion of the left skid along with the attached aft float separated from the helicopter and were not recovered. The main body of the helicopter including the main rotor system and the engine were recovered. A postaccident examination of the float system revealed that the flexible hoses that supply Helium to the mid and aft floats on both the left and right skids were installed incorrectly (interchanged) which resulted in non-restricted air being delivered to the mid float and restricted air being delivered to the aft float. As a result, the right side center float burst due to excessive pressure and the aft float did not fully inflate.
Probable cause
A suspected failure of the tail rotor for undetermined reasons. A contributing factor was the failure of the emergency floats to properly inflate due to improper installment and inspection by maintenance personnel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10IA314
- Event ID
- 20100611X90837
- Case number
- CEN10IA314
- 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: 1edcb15066475b80016fda4bc5b6fea90a6f1d73f3191152195280dc140c73e0; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:26:26.490Z.