Air Methods Bell Helicopter Textron Canada 407 accident
Bell Helicopter Textron Canada 407 · Accident: birdstrike en route
From Pines Bluff, AR to Helena, AR
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18FA033
- 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
- 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
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Bell Helicopter Textron Canada 407
- Aircraft type
- Bell 407
- 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
- N620PA
- Operator
- Air Methods
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pines Bluff, ARTo Helena, AR
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2015)
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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
- Birdstrike
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter air ambulance flight was en route to pick up a patient when company satellite tracking was lost at an altitude about 1,250 ft mean sea level. The helicopter impacted a reservoir bank and a postimpact fire consumed a majority of the fuselage. Examination of the helicopter did not reveal any anomalies with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
A postaccident examination of the wreckage found multiple bird remains, identified as snow geese, were located in the cockpit and embedded in the pilot's clothing and boot. Fragments of a night vision goggle (NVG) system near the pilot's position suggest that the pilot was using them for visual navigation; however, there was no moon illumination to enhance the NVG effectiveness, and it is unlikely that the pilot would have been able to visually detect the birds before impact. While the helicopter flight controls were continuous, it could not be determined if the bird strikes jammed the pilot's controls and/or incapacitated the pilot.
Probable cause
An in-flight loss of control due to bird strikes.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18FA033
- Event ID
- 20171119X32831
- Case number
- CEN18FA033
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2017-11-20.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f63f7361d408fd48ff4f8d063ade1b7354f53deca237af6f2de5a6503cadcab8; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:24:58.052Z.