ENG10IA045 · Bell 430
Chevron USA Bell 430 · Incident: flight control system malfunction/failure before flight
From Venice, LA to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG10IA045
- 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 430
- Aircraft type
- Bell 430
- 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
- N430CM
- Operator
- Chevron USA
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Venice, LATo 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 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On August 4, 2010, at 0645 central daylight time, a Bell Helicopter Textron 430 was on the ground at ground idle power conducting the engine start checklist when the collective went to the full up position. There were no injuries among the passengers and crew. Further inspection of the aircraft revealed that the main rotor collective servoactuator piston rod had fractured. No other airframe damage was noted.
The collective servo actuator was examined in the Bell Helicopter Textron’s Field Investigations Laboratory. According to Bell Helicopter Textron, the servo actuator piston rod was found to be fractured as a result of stress corrosion cracking.
In response to this incident, Bell Helicopter Textron issued a number of alert service bulletins to perform a one time inspection of the servo actuator piston rod prior to further flight. This service bulletin only applied to servo actuators manufactured by Woodward HRT. Since this same type of servo actuator was also used on other Bell Helicopter Textron helicopters, additional alert service bulletins were issued.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) incorporated these service bulletins’ recommended actions (with some minor revisions) in an Emergency Airworthiness Directive. The FAA’s emergency AD followed the issuance of an AD by Transport Canada.
Probable cause
The fracture of the collective servo actuator piston rod resulting from stress corrosion cracking.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG10IA045
- Event ID
- 20100813X32828
- Case number
- ENG10IA045
- 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: c60a81754c93aa7f1bbb064c65afebb44fb687bbc43c6d9372d43248f9951b9c; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:50:21.051Z.