CEN15LA395 · Bell Helicopter Textron Canada 429
Bell Helicopter Textron Canada 429 · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure en route
From Giddings, TX (private airstrip) to Port O'Connor, TX (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA395
- 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 Helicopter Textron Canada 429
- Aircraft type
- Bell 429
- 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
- N429AR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Giddings, TX (private airstrip)To Port O'Connor, TX (private airstrip)
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2011)
- 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
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/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 systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that, during cruise flight in the helicopter, he felt a "slight vibration" and heard a "very faint bumping sound." A flight control check revealed no anomalies, and the pilot continued the flight to the destination heliport. While in a 4-ft hover, just before touching down, the helicopter began a slow, uncommanded right turn. The pilot applied full left anti-torque pedal, and the turn stopped. He then lowered the collective and landed without incident. A post-flight inspection of the helicopter revealed that one of the tail rotor outboard pitch change links (PCL) was broken. An examination of the failed PCL revealed fatigue fractures due to pitting corrosion between the spherical bearing and the bearing housing. The fatigue fractures propagated during operation until the PCL bearing housing fractured, separating the PCL from the blade pitch horn end spherical bearing, resulting in a loss of pitch control to the affected blade.
The PCL was installed on the helicopter 12 days before the manufacturer issued an alert service bulletin (ASB) introducing a 50-hour recurrent inspection of the tail rotor PCLs for axial and radial bearing play. About 6 months later, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) subsequently issued an emergency airworthiness directive (EAD) based on the ASB. The tail rotor PCLs on the accident helicopter were inspected in accordance with the ASB and the EAD 9 days after the EAD was issued. The PCL failed 6.6 flight hours after the inspection. The EAD did not require an inspection of the bearing housing portion of the PCL for corrosion, and it could not be determined if the fatigue cracks were present when the inspection was performed.
Following the accident, the manufacturer updated the original ASB to include inspections for bearing cracks, corrosion, and anti-corrosion sealant. The FAA also updated the airworthiness directive to reflect the additional inspections.
Probable cause
The fatigue failure of the tail rotor pitch change link spherical bearing housing as a result of corrosion pitting.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA395
- Event ID
- 20150901X73122
- Case number
- CEN15LA395
- 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: be9252c534faa45df0edb354791f087c4d9f49116e34af42bad2b75e486e768c; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:44:10.061Z.