ERA17LA032 · Bell OH 58C
Helicopter Applicators Bell OH 58C · Accident: part(s) separation from aircraft during initial climb
From Cameron, NC to Cameron, NC
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA032
- 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 OH 58C
- Aircraft type
- Bell OH-58
- 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
- N139RD
- Operator
- Helicopter Applicators
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cameron, NCTo Cameron, NC
- Aircraft age
- About 45 years (built 1971)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Part(s) separation from aircraft
- 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 propeller/rotor
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting a local aerial application flight in the restricted-category military surplus helicopter. After loading the helicopter with herbicide, the pilot departed from the staging area; however, during the initial climb, as the helicopter was about 50 ft above the ground, the outboard portion of one of the two main rotor blades separated. The main rotor blades then struck the tailboom, and the helicopter entered an uncontrolled descent to the ground. Metallurgical examination of the fractured main rotor blade revealed a crack with fatigue features emanating from multiple origins in the area of the inertia weight attachment hole.
The helicopter manufacturer, Bell, also a restricted-category type certificate holder for the same model helicopter as the accident helicopter, had published a military alert bulletin (MAB) about 30 years before the accident (revised about 9 years before the accident) and an operations safety notice (OSN) about 9 years before the accident applicable to the main rotor blade that fractured during the accident flight; operators were instructed to conduct initial visual inspections of the blades in the area of the inertia weight screw heads and subsequent inspections at intervals of 8 hours or 32 flights, whichever occurred first. However, the OSN only applied to the airframe serial numbers under the responsibility of Bell. Both the operator and the type certificate holder of the accident helicopter, Rotorcraft Development, indicated that they were not aware of the MAB or the OSN until after the accident. Additionally, a preventive maintenance services inspection program that was published by the previous type certificate holder for the accident helicopter (Garlick Helicopters) did not contain requirements to inspect the main rotor blade per the aforementioned MAB and OSN. Performance of the recurrent inspection required by the MAB and the OSN likely would have detected the fatigue cracks on the main rotor blade before its failure during the accident flight. The Federal Aviation Administration did not require sharing of safety information, such as the MAB and the OSN recurrent inspections, between restricted-category type certificate holders.
Probable cause
An in-flight failure of a main rotor blade due to fatigue cracks. Contributing to the failure of the main rotor blade was the absence of guidance to the operator to inspect an area of the main rotor blade known to be susceptible to fatigue cracks and the accident helicopter type certificate holder’s lack of information of an existing inspection published by another restricted-category type certificate holder of the same model helicopter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA032
- Event ID
- 20161101X35334
- Case number
- ERA17LA032
- 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: 554abd3ccfa13f08ceb3cec5bfbe2baaf2e571f5a28e9dfbcf8b87b8f5767beb; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:48:13.078Z.