GAA16CA439 · Bell 206 L4
Acadiana Helicopters Bell 206 L4 · Accident: tailstrike during landing
From Abbeville Chris Crusta Memorial Airport (IYA) to Variable Bore Rams Heliport (3LA7)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA439
- 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 206 L4
- 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
- N7898X
- Operator
- Acadiana Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Abbeville Chris Crusta Memorial Airport (IYA), Abbeville, LATo Variable Bore Rams Heliport (3LA7), Broussard, LA
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2004)
- 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
- 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
- Tailstrike
- 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 › 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 pilot of the skid-equipped helicopter, he was practicing landing on an 18 foot by 18 foot transport dolly. The pilot reported that during his second landing on the dolly, he landed on the aft end of the dolly and the helicopter slid backwards. He recalled that he heard and felt a thump, pulled pitch, and the helicopter ascended about 5 feet, yawed to the right and he initiated an autorotation and landed. He reported that the bottom of the skids showed scrape marks, "so I must have slid back off the dolly and hit the tail stinger." The tailboom and the vertical stabilizer sustained substantial damage.
The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or anomalies with any portion of the helicopter during the flight that would have prevented normal flight operations.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to attain a proper touchdown point, which resulted in the helicopter sliding off the aft end of the transport dolly.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA439
- Event ID
- 20160822X43925
- Case number
- GAA16CA439
- 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: 504ddc8c9497415a907dbc007114d42c001058d05676f87b9f378a7a9883d496; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:10:50.170Z.