CEN21LA169 · Bell OH-58
Bell OH-58 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Sherman, TX to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN21LA169
- 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 OH-58
- 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
- N1045C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sherman, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 49 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
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while in a hover and preparing to land in a field, wind caught the turbine-powered helicopter causing it to drift into a fence. The helicopter’s skid caught on the fence and the helicopter flipped over onto its right side, impacting terrain, and coming to rest on a driveway. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the tailboom, fuselage, and main rotor system. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation. About 30 minutes before the accident, an automated weather reporting station located about 6 miles south of the accident side, reported wind from 220o at 6 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot failure to maintain directional control of the helicopter when it encountered an unanticipated wind allowing it to drift into a fence and subsequently roll over and impact terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN21LA169
- Event ID
- 20210329102827
- Case number
- CEN21LA169
- 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: 873fa1d7289deae179c8e61288018f9d170f2b3a7b79504e838bee45695fde72; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:53:28.193Z.