ERA13TA021 · Bell OH-58A
Jackson Police Department Bell OH-58A · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Jackson, TN to Jackson, TN
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13TA021
- 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
- 0
- 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-58A
- 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
- N40TN
- Operator
- Jackson Police Department
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jackson, TNTo Jackson, 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
- 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 · 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 engine power (total)
- 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 was providing aerial observation for law enforcement activity on the ground when he observed the rotor rpm decaying. He initiated a descending left 180-degree autorotation to a flat, grassy area. As he was lining up for the intended landing area, he noticed that a man on a riding lawnmower was moving toward his intended touchdown point. To avoid a collision, he maneuvered the helicopter to the right to get ahead of the lawnmower. The pilot determined that he could not make his intended touchdown point and landed on uneven terrain. The helicopter impacted the ground, which resulted in damage to the fuselage, main rotor system and separation of the tail boom. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined despite a thorough engine examination and test run.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons because postaccident examination of the engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13TA021
- Event ID
- 20121015X93847
- Case number
- ERA13TA021
- 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: d4502f0a97bad18226a56ee3eba5b033b172e9fe5d4be8e8ff516c512c593302; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:10:33.425Z.