CEN17WA383 · Bell 47G 2
Bell 47G 2 · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Aerotortuguero Airport (MRAO) to Aerotortuguero Airport (MRAO)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN17WA383
- 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
- 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
Bell 47G 2
- Aircraft type
- Bell 47
- 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
- TI-BGH
- Operator
- Heli Green of Costa Rica
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aerotortuguero Airport (MRAO)To Aerotortuguero Airport (MRAO)
- 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
- Non-U.S., Non-Commercial
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On September 18, 2017, at 0720 central daylight time, a Bell 47G2 helicopter, Costa Rican registration TI-BGH, serial number 1459, impacted terrain during an aerial application flight, near Llano Bonito de Pococí, Costa Rica. The pilot was fatally injured, and the helicopter sustained substantial damage. Day visual meteorological conditions prevailed for the local agricultural flight.The investigation is under the jurisdiction of the Costa Rican Government and further information may be obtained from:
Consejo Técnico de Aviación Civil (CETAC) Phone: (506) 2231-3280 Fax: (560) 2290-4121 Email: CTACaviacion@dgac.go.cr Webpage: www.dgac.go.cr/acerca_/cetac/
This report is for informational purposes only and contains only information released by or obtained from the Costa Rican Consejo Técnico de Aviación Civil (CETAC).
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN17WA383
- Event ID
- 20180702X64203
- Case number
- CEN17WA383
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ef463936cb5e31494d4fc284ffdd8525e6864bd33364cd88302afdd9df4ba376; retrieved 2026-09-15T06:43:34.070Z.