CEN12LA480 · Scotts-Bell 47 Inc 47G-2A
Scotts Helicopter Service Scotts-Bell 47 Inc 47G-2A · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Akeley, MN (no airport) to Akeley, MN (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA480
- 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
Scotts-Bell 47 Inc 47G-2A
- Aircraft type
- Scotts Bell 47 47
- 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
- N73252
- Operator
- Scotts Helicopter Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Akeley, MN (no airport)To Akeley, MN (no airport)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The agricultural helicopter pilot reported he was on a “clean up” pass and descending toward the field over a set of power lines when he experienced a slight yaw to the right and felt a slight vibration that seemed to be coming from the rear of the helicopter. When he began to apply left pedal input, the helicopter immediately entered an excessively nose low attitude with increased right yaw. After the pilot applied aft cyclic control, the helicopter impacted terrain and came to rest on its left side. An examination of the helicopter and its systems revealed no preimpact anomalies or malfunctions, and there was no evidence that the helicopter had impacted the power lines. The source of the vibration could not be determined.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain helicopter control during low altitude agricultural operations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA480
- Event ID
- 20120726X21248
- Case number
- CEN12LA480
- 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: 27c2b266be6ebdd5a94022b7432761f43ab15a4cd23032cb4716e338a9465f4a; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:05:09.902Z.