ERA22LA091 · Bell Helicopter Textron Canada 429
New York City Police Department Bell Helicopter Textron Canada 429 · Accident: dragged wing/rotor/float/other during landing
From FBF · Brooklyn, NY to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA091
- 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
- 0
- 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
- Government
- 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 429
- Aircraft type
- Bell 429
- 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
- N920PD
- Operator
- New York City Police Department
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From FBF · Brooklyn, NYTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2014)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Dragged wing/rotor/float/other
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
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 reported that during landing and once established directly over the helipad, he proceeded to hover taxi over to the assigned landing location, but during touchdown the helicopter unexpectedly shifted forward, rotating onto the front skids, then began to oscillate. The crew heard a loud “bang” and subsequently the helicopter became airborne briefly before settling down hard on the pavement and the helicopter started to go into ground resonance, becoming uncontrollable. The pilot reported that the helipad was congested with several other aircraft on the ground and two preparing to land, so when the helicopter became uncontrollable, he “dumped” the collective and rolled back the throttle. During the oscillations, the main rotor blades stuck the wire strike protection system, which resulted in substantial damage to the rotor blades. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilots overapplication of flight controls during landing, which resulted in the rotor blades contacting the wire strike protection system and subsequent hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA091
- Event ID
- 20211221104433
- Case number
- ERA22LA091
- 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, 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: 152e387f02ce9f76d4659473af43e8c8dd85e1e05f1bbacfa2fbff885e8ef17b; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:50:50.334Z.