ERA10IA459 · Bell Helicopter Textron Canada 407
Med-Trans Bell Helicopter Textron Canada 407 · Incident en route
From Johnston Willis Heliport (VG41) to Wythe County Community Hospital Heliport (22VA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10IA459
- 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 Helicopter Textron Canada 407
- Aircraft type
- Bell 407
- 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
- N516MT
- Operator
- Med-Trans
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Johnston Willis Heliport (VG41), Marion, VATo Wythe County Community Hospital Heliport (22VA), Wytheville, VA
- 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
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a positioning flight shortly after takeoff, the pilot began to have chest pains and he informed the on-board medical crew that he would be returning to the departure heliport. He landed uneventfully at the heliport and was then airlifted by a company helicopter to a hospital in Tennessee for medical treatment.
Probable cause
The cardiac impairment of the pilot during a positioning flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10IA459
- Event ID
- 20100901X94640
- Case number
- ERA10IA459
- 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: local date, investigation status, damage. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2010-08-31.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ac6cf95e1820792bf0c550fc8c81e2864e54e319fca82baba244843dc475da87; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:04:10.271Z.