ERA17LA256 · D & K Aviation BABY BELLE
D & K Aviation BABY BELLE · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Spartanburg Downtown Memorial Airport (SPA) to Spartanburg Downtown Memorial Airport (SPA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA256
- 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
D & K Aviation BABY BELLE
- Aircraft type
- D BABY BELLE
- 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
- N211CJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Spartanburg Downtown Memorial Airport (SPA), Spartanburg, SCTo Spartanburg Downtown Memorial Airport (SPA), Spartanburg, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 17 years (built 2000)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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 control in flight
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot of the experimental, amateur-built helicopter reported that he returned to the airfield after a local flight and was preparing to land. While flying about 4 ft above ground level at an indicated airspeed between 16 and 24 mph, he felt a shudder, and the helicopter yawed to the right. He straightened the helicopter with antitorque pedal inputs and did not recall hearing any engine noise, although the doors were removed. The next thing that he recalled was lying on the ground, with the helicopter leaking fuel. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the helicopter's main rotor blades were bent and the tailboom was severed. Postaccident examination of the helicopter, which included an engine run, did not reveal any evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Although the pilot reported 46 total hours of helicopter flight experience, all in the make and model of the accident helicopter, he did not possess a rotorcraft rating at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain helicopter control during the approach to landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA256
- Event ID
- 20170724X70507
- Case number
- ERA17LA256
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2017-07-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: cc8a103b7ba8ac0f45cfa4d77d85ad77cfcfe48200a3a93033768739d9909f52; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:35:50.870Z.