ERA15LA060 · Bell 206B
Helix Helicopters Bell 206B · Accident: hard landing
From Wellington Aero Club Airport (FD38) to Wellington Aero Club Airport (FD38)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA060
- 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
- N418SV
- Operator
- Helix Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wellington Aero Club Airport (FD38), West Palm Beach, FLTo Wellington Aero Club Airport (FD38), West Palm Beach, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1978)
- 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
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot, who was also the owner of the helicopter, reported that, after uneventfully completing a local flight, she observed a crack in the left skid. Further examination by a mechanic revealed additional substantial damage consistent with a hard landing. The pilot and a pilot-rated passenger stated that no hard landings occurred during the local flight.
The pilot also reported that, 2 days before the accident, a flight instructor had conducted two instructional flights in the accident helicopter at a different airport. According to the flight instructor and the two pilots receiving instruction on those flights, no hard landings occurred during the two flights, and they observed no damage during the two preflight and postflight inspections. Additionally, following those flights, the pilot repositioned the helicopter back to its home airport and did not notice any damage during the preflight or postflight inspection. The pilot added that the helicopter was not flown between the repositioning flight and the local flight after which the damage was discovered. The investigation could not determine when the damage occurred or who was flying the helicopter when it did.
Probable cause
A hard landing for reasons that could not be determined based on the available evidence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA060
- Event ID
- 20141128X93344
- Case number
- ERA15LA060
- 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: 8ec3bb2d07cc64fcf110e1a0f167d23564b17358aee028387a3e52e992e60f5e; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:56:56.243Z.