CEN18FA001 · Brantly B 2B B
Brantly B 2B B · Accident: loss of tail rotor effectiveness while maneuvering
From Midland, MI to Midland, MI
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18FA001
- 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
- 1 · 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
Brantly B 2B B
- Aircraft type
- Brantly B-2
- 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
- N2284U
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Midland, MITo Midland, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 52 years (built 1965)
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was conducting a local flight in the helicopter with a passenger. After departing from an open field, the pilot flew along the perimeter of the field, and the passenger recalled that about halfway around the perimeter of the field, the helicopter began descending, slowly at first and then more rapidly. According to the passenger, the rotor speed increased, but the helicopter continued to descend.
Ground-based video footage revealed that before it began descending, the helicopter was moving forward slowly when it yawed about 270° to the right. As it neared the ground, the helicopter again yawed to the right, completing nearly a 360° turn either immediately before or just after it contacted the ground. The helicopter came to rest on its left side. The engine continued to run after the helicopter came to rest, and the passenger shut it off.
Airframe and engine examinations did not reveal evidence of any anomalies consistent with a pre-impact failure or malfunction. Surface wind conditions recorded at nearby airports were light and variable.
Federal Aviation Administration publications regarding a loss of tail rotor effectiveness (LTE) state that in the event of a sudden, unanticipated right yaw, a pilot should apply full left pedal, simultaneously move the cyclic control forward to increase airspeed, and if altitude permits, reduce engine power. Factors that contribute to LTE are a high-power setting, which induces considerable main rotor downwash and more turbulence relative to a low power setting, and a slow forward speed, which may create variations in airflow around the tail rotor. The video footage showing a right yaw followed by a descent suggests that the pilot encountered LTE, which resulted in the 270° right yaw before the pilot was able to regain control. The additional power required by the tail rotor during the recovery reduced the power available to the main rotor and resulted in a descent that could not be arrested with the engine power available. It appeared that the pilot did not attempt to increase airspeed during the recovery, which reduced his ability to avoid impacting the ground.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the helicopter, which resulted in a loss of tail rotor effectiveness, and his failure to promptly initiate the proper recovery technique, which resulted in a descent that could not be arrested before impacting the terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18FA001
- Event ID
- 20171001X70042
- Case number
- CEN18FA001
- 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. 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: 9e020e6f4cd6d1ea60c1fc40e4b414e50d64d34537c3610c9d687ff77e923dac; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:19:03.081Z.