Air Methods MBB BK 117 A-3 accident
MBB BK 117 A-3 · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Javon Bea Hospital-Rockton Heliport (LL83) to 14IL · Mendota, IL
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13FA096
- 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
- 3 · 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
MBB BK 117 A-3
- Aircraft type
- MBB BK-117
- 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
- N911BK
- Operator
- Air Methods
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Javon Bea Hospital-Rockton Heliport (LL83), Rockford, ILTo 14IL · Mendota, IL
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The medical transport helicopter was on a night flight conducted under visual flight rules (VFR) to pick up a patient for transport. The pilot had computer-based weather information available, but it is unknown what information he reviewed before deciding to accept the flight. Weather observation stations along the route of flight were reporting VFR conditions around the time that the pilot accepted the flight. About 17 minutes into the flight, the pilot reported to the receiving hospital's communications center that he was aborting the mission due to encountering inclement weather and was returning to base. Flight track data indicated that the helicopter initiated a right turn at this time, away from a nearby lighted windmill farm toward an area with sparse ground lighting . The flight track then showed a slight descent before the end of the data. The last recorded position was about 0.75 miles east-southeast of the main wreckage site. The helicopter impacted an agricultural field in an inverted, nose-low attitude. Examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Weather data and reports from first responders indicated that the flight likely encountered areas of snow, freezing drizzle, and supercooled liquid water. The lack of ground lighting combined with the precipitation encountered likely reduced the visibility and outside visual references available to the pilot resulting in spatial disorientation and subsequent loss of control.
Probable cause
The inadvertent encounter with inclement weather, including snow, freezing rain, and reduced visibility conditions, which led to the pilot’s spatial disorientation and loss of aircraft control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13FA096
- Event ID
- 20121210X32953
- Case number
- CEN13FA096
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-12-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ac2d3ba773e260059baf9ac366d5acd7a8973f32a92229becda839a517ea25c8; retrieved 2026-09-14T15:50:27.055Z.