ERA13TA237 · Bell OH-58C
Georgia Aviation Authority Bell OH-58C · Accident: hard landing
From Jekyll Island Airport (09J) to Jekyll Island Airport (09J)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13TA237
- 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
- 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-58C
- 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
- N927SP
- Operator
- Georgia Aviation Authority
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Jekyll Island Airport (09J), Jekyll Island, GATo Jekyll Island Airport (09J), Jekyll Island, GA
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 propeller/rotor
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
As part of the training and evaluation flight, the pilot was demonstrating to the instructor a simulated engine failure and autorotation to touchdown with the engine throttle at the idle setting throughout the maneuver. At the termination of the maneuver, the pilot increased collective pitch to stretch the glide, and the rotor rpm was allowed to decay to the lower end of the normal operating range. He then "abruptly" flared the helicopter to slow its ground speed and added additional collective pitch to level the helicopter. The rotor rpm decayed further, the helicopter landed hard, and the main rotor struck the tailboom, severing the tail rotor driveshaft. Both pilots reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain rotor rpm in the normal operating range during a practice autorotation, which resulted in a hard landing. Contributing to the accident was the inadequate supervision by the flight instructor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13TA237
- Event ID
- 20130512X82339
- Case number
- ERA13TA237
- 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: 47e5323493c8ee08c58632bf713e7f3dd19a717c8090d0acc059f3090ed574f7; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:31:24.948Z.