CEN22LA078 · Bell Helicopter Textron Canada 407
Oregon Airbus Bell Helicopter Textron Canada 407 · Accident: hard landing during autorotation
From Perot Field/Fort Worth Alliance Airport (AFW) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA078
- 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 Helicopter Textron Canada 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
- N862YB
- Operator
- Oregon Airbus
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Perot Field/Fort Worth Alliance Airport (AFW), Fort Worth, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 2 years (built 2019)
- 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
- Autorotation
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he elected to practice a couple power recovery autorotations before landing at his destination. The first autorotation was uneventful. During the second autorotation he decreased the throttle to what he thought was the idle position. Shortly thereafter, he received an “engine out” audio warning. He glanced at the throttle position on the collective and observed that he accidentally had the throttle in the off position instead of the idle position. The pilot attempted to restart the engine, but with the ground quickly approaching, he elected to perform an engine out autorotation to the ground. He flared about 35 feet above the ground. About 7 feet above the ground, the main rotor RPM became too slow, and the helicopter dropped to the ground. The rear skids impacted hard; the helicopter rocked forward then came to rest on its left side.
The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the main rotor system, fuselage, tail boom, and the tail rotor system. The pilot reported there were no mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain adequate main rotor RPM during an autorotation which resulted in a hard landing. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s improper placement of the throttle during the initial practice power-on recovery autorotation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA078
- Event ID
- 20211216104415
- Case number
- CEN22LA078
- 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: 286506b0071622bc6593a9c3091f2b54d94f470a4a090fa248ef71317e770105; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:50:22.810Z.