Air Evac EMS Bell 206 L4 incident
Bell 206 L4 · Incident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) during initial climb
From Relience, TN to Erlanger Medical Center Heliport (0TN8)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11IA436
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- 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 206 L4
- 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
- N484AE
- Operator
- Air Evac EMS
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Relience, TNTo Erlanger Medical Center Heliport (0TN8), Chattanooga, TN
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
- Minor
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Before landing, the pilot performed a high and low reconnaissance of the area and received a briefing of the obstacles by the landing zone. The crew was advised of wires along the road north of the field and large rolls of hay spaced intermittently across the field. The pilot then landed the helicopter in a field and picked up a patient who had been involved in a motor vehicle accident. Given the weight of the helicopter and power available, the pilot elected to perform an airspeed-over-altitude takeoff on a westerly departure path along the long axis of the landing zone. The departure path was signaled to the landing zone commander, who issued an approval for the takeoff. During the initial takeoff climb, the helicopter struck wires and returned to the field for landing. After the incident, a closer inspection of the takeoff path revealed that a three-strand group of wires crossed the west side of the field perpendicular to the takeoff path. When viewed from the point of departure, the wires appeared to emanate from the thick, tall tree lines that bordered both sides of the landing zone, and were superimposed against a background of dense woods. There were no additional visual cues (poles, towers, or transformers) available that could be associated with the wires. Additionally, at the time of the accident, the sun was directly in the takeoff path and 30 degrees above the horizon. The bright sunlight and glare conditions likely reduced the ability of ground crew and the flight crew to discern wire obstacles.
Probable cause
Inadvertent contact with wires due to the lack of visual cues regarding their presence and the low angle of the sun, which was directly in the takeoff path.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11IA436
- Event ID
- 20110802X62825
- Case number
- ERA11IA436
- 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: 30cf67c7b29c21dfda4fd294242401c7ce4027248bfe6c9b77b664be2b6c8104; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:32:51.420Z.