CEN13LA378 · Bell 206B
Air Evac Lifeteam Bell 206B · Accident: uncontained engine failure while maneuvering
From Spirit of St Louis Airport (KSUS) to Spirit of St Louis Airport (KSUS)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA378
- 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 206B
- Aircraft type
- Bell 206
- 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
- N297CA
- Operator
- Air-Evac Lifeteam
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spirit of St Louis Airport (KSUS), St Louis, MOTo Spirit of St Louis Airport (KSUS), St Louis, MO
- 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
- Uncontained engine 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that, shortly after he and the pilot-rated student departed on a night training flight in the turbine-powered helicopter, they heard a loud bang, and the helicopter yawed left. The flight instructor chose to perform an autorotation with forward airspeed onto the airport's taxiway. Examination of the turbine engine revealed several holes in the compressor case, consistent with engine blades exiting the engine. Further examination revealed that the stages 3 through 6 compressor blades had separated at the roots. Examination also revealed that the 3rd-stage wheel blade root had fractured due to progressive cracking, consistent with fatigue; 54 percent of the fracture surface exhibited fatigue features. However, the fracture initiation surface was destroyed, so it was not possible to determine the cause of the fatigue failure. Indications of fatigue were also found on the stages 3 through 6 blades' fracture surfaces. The engine's compressor had 13,874 hours time since new (TSN) and the compressor rotor stages 1 through 6 wheels had 1,185.3 hours TSN and were Parts Manufacturer Approval replacement parts.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to the separation of compressor blades, which resulted from fatigue cracking.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA378
- Event ID
- 20130524X71407
- Case number
- CEN13LA378
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2013-05-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8a76632ce924b91c95c5189f8763807bb73c97ce23833ce216e9b4865a122d28; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:39:17.766Z.