ERA16WA072 · Bell 206 B
Bell 206 B · Accident
From Potrerillos to Potrerillos
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16WA072
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- API-reported fatalities
- 2 · 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
- Not recorded
Bell 206 B
- 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
- LV-VFD
- Operator
- Helisol
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From PotrerillosTo Potrerillos
- 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
- Non-U.S., Non-Commercial
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
- Not recorded
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On December 12, 2015, about 1100 coordinated universal time, a Bell-206, Argentinian registration LV-VFD, was destroyed during a low altitude cruise flight over a reservoir when the helicopter struck the water for undetermined reasons, and sank in approximately 200 feet of water. The pilot and passenger were fatally injured. The reservoir was located in the mountains near Potrerillos, Argentina, approximately 6,000 feet above sea level.
The investigation is under the jurisdiction of the Government of Argentina. Further information can be obtained from:
Republic of Argentina National Directorate of Investigations (54) 11 4382-8890 / 91 E-mail: info@jiaac.gov.ar Avenida Belgrano 1370 – Piso 11 C1093AAO, Cuidad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina
This report is for informational purposes and contains only information released by the Government of Argentina.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16WA072
- Event ID
- 20151217X21921
- Case number
- ERA16WA072
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (5)
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9ae1f54e6d3c4ef85bc48bcd45e3f65b2f4fb7c72154e9c32b24e8984fd3023a; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:35:45.281Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: damage. The narrative (Argentine JIAAC information) states the Bell 206 was destroyed when it struck the water of a reservoir near Potrerillos and sank in about 200 feet of water.