GAA20CA062 · Bell 47G 2
Bell 47G 2 · Accident: hard landing
From Seminole Lake Gliderport (6FL0) to Seminole Lake Gliderport (6FL0)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA20CA062
- 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
- 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
- N6746D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Seminole Lake Gliderport (6FL0), Groveland, FLTo Seminole Lake Gliderport (6FL0), Groveland, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 61 years (built 1958)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 systems
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot reported that, during landing, the helicopter experienced a hydraulic failure. He added that he "overreacted" by making multiple commands to the cyclic, which resulted in a tail strike, followed by a hard landing and roll-over. The helicopter caught fire, and the student egressed through the left door. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and tailboom. According to Federal Aviation Administration inspectors who interviewed the pilot immediately following the accident, the pilot stated that he overreacted and that he did not accomplish the helicopter manufacturer's Hydraulic Failure emergency procedure because he "didn't want to let go of the cyclic or the collective to turn off the hydraulic pressure switch." The hydraulic pump and the hydraulic lines were damaged during the postaccident fire; therefore, the reason for the reported hydraulic failure could not be determined.
Probable cause
The student pilot's improper cyclic input after a reported hydraulic failure, the reason for which could not be determined, and his failure to follow the emergency procedures, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA20CA062
- Event ID
- 20191107X13434
- Case number
- GAA20CA062
- 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: f76afa917e61812fd2414388abeb7060ed832f7df98890103869dcd6ce12c455; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:33:54.835Z.