WPR13LA303 · Bell 206L-3
Hillcrest Aircraft Bell 206L-3 · Accident: settling with power/vortex ring state while maneuvering
From Missoula Montana Airport (MSO) to Missoula Montana Airport (MSO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA303
- 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 206L-3
- 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
- N868H
- Operator
- Hillcrest Aircraft
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Missoula Montana Airport (MSO), Missoula, MTTo Missoula Montana Airport (MSO), Missoula, MT
- Aircraft age
- About 24 years (built 1989)
- 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 · hover
- 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
- Settling with power/vortex ring state
- 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 › Action/decision
- 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 pilot reported that, while making a shallow approach to the water to fill a water bucket in preparation for his fourth water drop, he was looking down at the bucket, and, just as the bucket went into the water, the helicopter began "settling [with power]." The pilot corrected the condition by moving the cyclic right and forward and descending the helicopter, which placed it "back in good air" and then moved the helicopter forward. With the bucket in the water, the pilot pulled the cyclic aft as the line became tight. However, the helicopter's nose dropped very low instead of rising as expected, and the main rotor struck the tail. The helicopter subsequently started spinning right likely because the main rotor strike had severed the tail rotor drive shaft, and, after two or three turns, the pilot realized that he could not control the helicopter, so he rolled off the throttle, which stopped the spin. The helicopter then descended and contacted the water hard. The pilot determined that he had not taken into account that the river had moved the bucket downstream, and, as a result, the bucket was behind (not directly below) the helicopter, which caused the helicopter's nose to pitch down when the line became tight. The pilot reported no mechanical anomalies with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation, and he stated that the wind was calm at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to prevent the helicopter from settling with power and to maintain proper position relative to an external load, which resulted in a loss of control and subsequent hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA303
- Event ID
- 20130702X62527
- Case number
- WPR13LA303
- 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: 10c2ee826625cb7795ab1b0eedf286c8359437753c0912b348b4b840ae9869cc; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:04:30.215Z.