WPR12LA107 · Bell AH-1F
Bell AH-1F · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure while maneuvering
From Coolidge Municipal Airport (P08) to Coolidge Municipal Airport (P08)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA107
- 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 AH-1F
- Aircraft type
- Bell AH-1
- 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
- N197LE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Coolidge Municipal Airport (P08), Coolidge, AZTo Coolidge Municipal Airport (P08), Coolidge, AZ
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was conducting flybys to film a segment for a documentary. During his last run, he initiated a 150- to 180-degree climbing right turn to about 200 ft above the ground. After the turn, he attempted to neutralize the flight controls in preparation for a normal approach to land, but he was unable to move them. The helicopter remained in the same turn rate with the same collective pitch and cyclic input until ground impact. A postaccident examination of the helicopter revealed no evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The reason for the flight control malfunction could not be determined.
Probable cause
A flight control malfunction while maneuvering for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination revealed no evidence of a mechanical malfunction or failure that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA107
- Event ID
- 20120217X34147
- Case number
- WPR12LA107
- 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: ed07f7b1c254d89f21dd4ef8861df5319e7c03baff6de03940e3cc78201d5654; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:15:40.081Z.