WPR11LA151 · Bell 206B-III
Upper Limit Aviation Bell 206B-III · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Salt Lake City International Airport (KSLC) to Bolinder Field Tooele Valley Airport (KTVY)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA151
- 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-III
- 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
- N206BY
- Operator
- Upper Limit Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salt Lake City International Airport (KSLC), Salt Lake CityTo Bolinder Field Tooele Valley Airport (KTVY), Tooele, UT
- 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 · hover
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While accompanying a pilot who was developing further proficiency in helicopter long-line external load operations, the accident pilot, who had a total time of 1.5 hours in the make and model helicopter that was being flown, was offered the opportunity to fly an external load circuit. During the circuit, which was the pilot's first long-line experience in that make and model helicopter, the helicopter suddenly began to yaw to the right as it approached the point where the load was going to be placed on the ground. The pilot at the controls was unable to arrest the yaw, and during his attempt to regain control of the helicopter, it descended into the terrain. A postaccident examination of the helicopter found no evidence of any anomaly or malfunction that would have contributed to a loss of control of the helicopter.
Probable cause
The pilot did not maintain yaw control of the helicopter during a maneuvering hover. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s lack of experience in the make and model helicopter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA151
- Event ID
- 20110302X25118
- Case number
- WPR11LA151
- 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, coordinates. 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: f5637720b62bf1362e921bf80f638133ae19320b83c7b57745b282e707de8d0f; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:52:07.926Z.