GAA16LA117 · Helicopteres Guimbal CABRI G2
Helicopteres Guimbal CABRI G2 · Accident: loss of tail rotor effectiveness while maneuvering
From Beaumont Municipal Airport (BMT) to Beaumont Municipal Airport (BMT)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16LA117
- 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
Helicopteres Guimbal CABRI G2
- Aircraft type
- Guimbal CABRI
- 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
- N503DS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Beaumont Municipal Airport (BMT), Beaumont, TXTo Beaumont Municipal Airport (BMT), Beaumont, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2015)
- 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
- Loss of tail rotor effectiveness
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- 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
According to the private pilot, after completing a local area flight, he was hover-taxiing the helicopter to the ramp on about a 065-degree heading. Once the helicopter was clear of the taxiway, the helicopter encountered a small wind gust, which the pilot classified as a "tailwind." He corrected the helicopter's subsequent left rotation by applying about one-quarter of right tail rotor pedal and noted that the airspeed was about 20 knots and the altitude was about 10 ft.
About 1 second later, the helicopter encountered another more significant wind gust. The pilot noted that he applied full right tail rotor pedal but that the helicopter continued to rotate left and that he then "nudged" the cyclic to the right to "follow the left spin out" and regain control. The pilot was able to stop the forward momentum of the helicopter; however, the left skid contacted the ground, and the helicopter rolled left and impacted terrain.
The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation and that he considered this a loss of tail rotor effectiveness event. The pilot reported that the wind at the airport at the time of the accident was from 220 degrees at 14 knots gusting to 24 knots. It is likely that the pilot did not maintain a nose-into-the-wind position and that, when the helicopter began to settle with power, it lost tail rotor effectiveness.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate compensation for wind during a hover-taxi and his failure to maintain helicopter control due to a loss of tail rotor effectiveness.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16LA117
- Event ID
- 20160201X01857
- Case number
- GAA16LA117
- 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: b37c89401723166c16b4e2402a315df3fb381378c8bd9bfda78da1177e946a6e; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:07:32.810Z.