CEN20LA068 · Bell 407
Executive Air Taxi Bell 407 · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Minot International Airport (KMOT) to Trinity Medical Center Heliport (2ND4)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA068
- 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 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
- N947LH
- Operator
- Executive Air Taxi
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Minot International Airport (KMOT), Minot, NDTo Trinity Medical Center Heliport (2ND4), Minot, ND
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 2001)
- 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/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 oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on a positioning flight to pick up a medical crew. As he neared the helipad, he performed a right 180° circling approach. After completing the turn, the pilot thought he was a little low on final approach, and "pulled in a little collective" as he leveled the helicopter, which contacted the landing pad "firmly." Before the subsequent departure, the pilot felt a vibration, and he shut down the helicopter to investigate. The crew walked toward the tail and noticed a slight bend in the lower vertical fin, the tips of both tail rotor blades missing, and the helipad safety fence missing a small section of the fence-edge pipe. Further examination of the helicopter identified cracks in the tail boom structure. A security camera video of the helipad showed that the helicopter's tail rotor impacted the fence during the landing.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from fencing around the landing pad during landing, which resulted in the tail rotor contacting the fence.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA068
- Event ID
- 20200128X02229
- Case number
- CEN20LA068
- 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, 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: 69aa3ff0176b9b5309075c3a1915cf893911dd7563ee134366444ecf7a439be5; retrieved 2026-09-16T11:00:37.933Z.