ERA21LA040 · Bell 206 A
North Carolina State Highway Patrol Bell 206 A · Accident: settling with power/vortex ring state on approach
From Johnston Regional Airport (JNX) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA040
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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 206 A
- Aircraft type
- Bell 206
- 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
- N123NC
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Johnston Regional Airport (JNX), Smithfield, NCTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1971)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Settling with power/vortex ring state
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After flying for about 1.5 hours on a training flight, the pilot of the helicopter returned to the operator’s hangar and aborted two approaches after encountering vortex ring state. He decided to land at a nearby facility to have the occupant disembark to reduce the gross weight of the helicopter, and to improve the power available margin. He departed and attempted a third approach to the hangar. At about 300 ft agl, the helicopter again encountered vortex ring state; however, there was not enough altitude to successfully complete the same recovery maneuver. The helicopter began losing altitude rapidly and while descending it impacted the tops of several trees. A main rotor blade then contacted the tail rotor drive shaft, which immediately resulted in a surge of the engine, followed by a yaw of the helicopter to the right. The pilot then conducted an autorotative landing into the middle of a nearby road. The helicopter’s tailboom, main rotor, and fuselage were substantially damaged during the accident sequence. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures of the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of helicopter control after entry into vortex ring state, which resulted in main rotor blade contact with the tailboom, and impact with the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA040
- Event ID
- 20201109102253
- Case number
- ERA21LA040
- 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, cause areas. 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: 89da0058ffc4fb745057f213d2553d33515474da4278e4d38dfd823f7899429e; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:21:15.939Z.