Helifly Bell 206B III accident
Bell 206B III · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From Enrique Olaya Herrera Airport (SKMD) to Los Garzones Airport (SKMR)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's date and registration. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16WA138
- 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
- 3 · 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Bell 206B III
- 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
- HK4674 Possible conflict
- Operator
- Helifly
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Enrique Olaya Herrera Airport (SKMD), MedellínTo Los Garzones Airport (SKMR), Monteria
- 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., 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
- 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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 March 23, 2016, about 1211 universal coordinated time, a Bell 206B III, Colombian registration HK4764, was destroyed when it impacted mountainous terrain and was consumed by a postcrash fire. Three of the four occupants were fatally injured, and one occupant was seriously injured. Instrument meteorological conditions prevailed for the flight that was conducted under Colombian flight regulations, which departed Enrique Olaya Herrera Airport (SKMD), Medellin, Colombia, destined for Monteria-Los Garzones Airport (SKMR), Monteria, Columbia.
The investigation is under the jurisdiction of the Government of Colombia. Further information can be obtained from:
Grupo Investigación de Accidentes Unidad Administrativa Especial de Aeronáutica Civil Av. Eldorado #103-23 Bogota, Colombia
This report is for informational purposes and contains only information released by the Government of Colombia.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16WA138
- Event ID
- 20160324X85218
- Case number
- ERA16WA138
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 793898b48517442236710133c16f4da78ad1f3005eceb01b0059a852ca073744; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:43:25.761Z.