CEN22FA086 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B · Accident: loss of tail rotor effectiveness while maneuvering
From Livingston Municipal Airport (00R) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22FA086
- 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
- 2 · 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 206B
- 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
- N8AU
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Livingston Municipal Airport (00R), Livingston, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 31 years (built 1990)
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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 tail rotor effectiveness
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Passengers reported that the helicopter flight was a sightseeing flight won at a local charity auction. The flight began normally with the intention to fly over the front-seat passenger’s childhood home but diverted to the passenger’s current home due to low clouds along the original route. The rear-seat passengers stated that the helicopter flew down the road where the residence was located and then around the house making a level right turn at low speed. The helicopter then flew over a pond on the property and toward the house. As the helicopter approached the house it was facing a southerly direction and came to a hover above the trees where the accident occurred. The passengers stated that the helicopter was either motionless in the hover or slightly drifting. The helicopter then began to rotate to the right, completing 2 revolutions while descending. The helicopter rotors struck trees and then fell onto a pile of wood that had been stacked due to land clearing activities. Postaccident examination of the helicopter did not reveal any preimpact anomalies and a passenger reported that the helicopter’s engine was still running after the accident. Video evidence showed that just before the accident the helicopter was operating with about 89% torque and in a hover about 150 ft above the ground, and no engine anomalies were recorded. Aviation weather reports indicated that the helicopter may have been facing into a slight wind of about 3 knots (kts); however, the lack of nearby official weather reporting stations, and the variability of unofficial weather reporting stations, made the wind determination inconclusive. Loss of tail rotor effectiveness (LTE) can be affected by numerous factors that could not be conclusively eliminated. Based on the lack of evidence of a mechanical failure, passenger witness accounts, and video showing the helicopter’s instrument panel after the initiation of the rotation, the helicopter likely sustained an aerodynamic loss of tail rotor effectiveness that resulted in an exceedance of the yaw capability of the helicopter during a high-power hover maneuver at low altitude, from which the pilot was unable to recover.
Probable cause
The pilot exceeding the yaw control capability of the helicopter for the flight conditions, resulting in a non-mechanical loss of tail rotor effectiveness.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22FA086
- Event ID
- 20211230104459
- Case number
- CEN22FA086
- 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: 9e1406d5ff8f32fa6fe8f0ee92c154fc0a52a7df0ac185dfdd726c4083f8bc59; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:40:00.274Z.