ERA20LA004 · Bell OH 58A
Bell OH 58A · Accident: dynamic rollover while maneuvering
From Bartow Executive Airport (BOW) to Fort Meade, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20LA004
- 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
- Government
- 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 OH 58A
- Aircraft type
- Bell OH-58
- 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
- N911RW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bartow Executive Airport (BOW), Bartow, FLTo Fort Meade, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1972)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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 · hover
- 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
- Dynamic rollover
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was attempting to rescue a gyroplane pilot who made a forced landing in a phosphate pit and gypsum pond by having him grab the right skid of the helicopter and lift him to safety. The pilot anticipated that he would have to compensate for the change in the helicopter's center of gravity when the gyroplane pilot grabbed the skid. The gyroplane pilot’s first two attempts to grab the helicopter’s right skid were unsuccessful. The helicopter pilot stated that the gyroplane pilot’s third attempt was more aggressive than the previous two attempts and that he was not prepared for the sudden center-of-gravity shift that resulted once the gyroplane pilot grabbed the right skid. The helicopter then entered a dynamic rollover to the right and impacted the gypsum pond, resulting in substantial damage to the main rotor blades, tail rotor, and the tailboom.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the helicopter, which resulted in a dynamic rollover and impact with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20LA004
- Event ID
- 20191004X94049
- Case number
- ERA20LA004
- 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: 2c74185c2949fc410db939deba22a3d0f8abec04ea1043425f97e1853c40ef88; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:17:28.309Z.