WPR18WA054 · Bell UH1H
Bell UH1H · Accident: loss of control in flight during initial climb
From Bredasdorp to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18WA054
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- 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
- Unknown
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
Bell UH1H
- Aircraft type
- Bell UH1
- 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
- ZS-HLI
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From BredasdorpTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Unknown
- 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
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On December 21, 2017, about 1105 Coordinated Universal time, a Bell UH-1H helicopter, ZS-HLI, was substantially damaged when it impacted terrain shortly after liftoff from Bredasdorp fire station, Western Cape Province, South Africa. The helicopter was operated by FFA Assets under the pertinent civil regulations of the government of Africa. The pilot sustained minor injuries, and the ground assistant was seriously injured. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed for the intended demonstration flight.
According to a communication by a representative of the South African Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), "the aircraft got airborne from LZ to reposition as bambi bucket strop was under skid. At very low hover the aircraft began to hop…the pilot decided to take power and fly away to correct but it worsened the oscillation and he lost control and the aircraft yawed and impacted a wall and the ground."
The investigation is under the jurisdiction of the Government of Africa. This report is for information purposes only and contains only information released by the Government of Africa. Further information pertaining to this accident may be obtained from:
South Africa Civil Aviation Authority
Accident & Incident Investigation Division
Southern Region Office
P.O. Box 174
Cape Town International Airport
Tel: +27 21 934 4744
Fax: +27 21 934 1326
Email: mail@caa.za
Web Site: www.caa.co.za
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18WA054
- Event ID
- 20171222X21314
- Case number
- WPR18WA054
- 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: 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: 0cbd0d1e518e103c5506f250ac44c8b5c4ae3287302415948f6eaf2de11fe52d; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:13:48.767Z.