ERA11CA082 · Bell 206L-3
HMC Helicopter Services Bell 206L-3 · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Palm Beach County Glades Airport (PHK) to Palm Beach County Glades Airport (PHK)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11CA082
- 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 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
- N955GT
- Operator
- HMC Helicopter Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palm Beach County Glades Airport (PHK), Pahokee, FLTo Palm Beach County Glades Airport (PHK), Pahokee, FL
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the night helicopter flight was to fly over bean fields to prevent crops from freezing. The pilot was maneuvering the helicopter over the bean field at a low altitude when he observed power lines at the end of the field. He crossed over the power lines and the helicopter subsequently descended to the ground for unknown reasons. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation. He additionally reported that his own fatigue may have contributed to the accident. The pilot had been awake for 18 hours and 30 minutes and had slept 2 hours prior to the accident. He further stated he had slept 5 hours 30 minutes in the last 24 hours and 14 hours in the last 72 hours.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from the ground while maneuvering at a low altitude. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s fatigue.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11CA082
- Event ID
- 20101208X25632
- Case number
- ERA11CA082
- 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: cba89ffb358a7a0c952c6a3df5818f9a41bfa12462b2888cdacae8097d72eb6b; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:36:39.506Z.