ERA11TA317 · Bell OH-58C
Bay County Sheriffs Office Bell OH-58C · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From PFN · Panama City, FL to PFN · Panama City, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11TA317
- 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
- Government
- 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 OH-58C
- Aircraft type
- Bell OH-58
- 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
- N82772
- Operator
- Bay County Sheriffs Office
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From PFN · Panama City, FLTo PFN · Panama City, 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was hover taxiing the helicopter straight out of an old, temporary hangar, as he had done numerous times. He estimated that the helicopter was about 3 feet above the ground, the last few feet of the tail were still inside the hangar, and he heard a loud bang. He started to lower the collective, but could not control the helicopter, which tipped over on its left side as it impacted the ground. Photographs showed that the main rotor blades had separated from the mast. The vertical tail fin had scrape marks on its top and the upper leading edge had an almost horizontal line several inches below the top. The tail rotor blades, which did not extend above the top of the vertical fin, were pristine. The hangar door overhead frame had three sets of scrape marks, with one angled about 30 degrees to the right and two sets angled about 20 to 25 degrees to the left. Electrical conduit would have normally been secured above the hangar door frame, but was drooped below it, separated and coiled. Remnants of the conduit, and the fact that the main rotor blade tips would have rotated above the vertical tail fin, indicate that the conduit likely had drooped below the hangar frame after the main rotor passage, then snagged the top of the vertical fin. The multiple sets of scrape marks at different angles on the underside of the overhead hangar frame indicate that the helicopter then likely pivoted several times while snagged, as the pilot lost control. No preexisting mechanical malfunctions were noted with the helicopter.
Probable cause
The drooping electrical conduit, which snagged the vertical fin and resulted in the pilot's inability to control the helicopter. Contributing to the accident was the operator's decision to have the pilot fly the helicopter out of the hangar.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11TA317
- Event ID
- 20110530X15219
- Case number
- ERA11TA317
- 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: 4e02f2df5a44964986f52d8535ad1e0b50702d6e3132a6924391ade2aa9561bf; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:13:27.581Z.