ERA23LA011 · Bell Textron Canada Ltd 505
Bell Textron Canada Ltd 505 · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Bokeelia, FL to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA011
- 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 Textron Canada Ltd 505
- Aircraft type
- Bell 505
- 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
- N5DF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bokeelia, FLTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 1 year (built 2021)
- 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 · IFR final 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
- 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
- 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
The pilot, who owned the helicopter, was proceeding to a landing zone to drop off passengers. As he initiated his approach, the prevailing wind was a right, quartering tailwind. His approach was near vertical, with no forward airspeed. The helicopter began to rotate to the right, then the rotation accelerated, and the pilot was unable to maintain helicopter control. The helicopter impacted the ground and came to rest on its left side, and the pilot and all three passengers were seriously injured. The main rotor struck a reinforced concrete light pole during the impact sequence, and the main rotor hub and blades separated from the main rotor mast. This resulted in an engine overspeed and blade shedding of the free turbine blades, by design, to prevent rupture of the free turbine disk. Postaccident examination of the airframe, engine, digital engine control unit, and data from integrated avionics revealed no evidence of a preexisting mechanical malfunction or failure that would have precluded normal operation. Recorded data revealed that during the approach, engine power demand exceeded engine power available, resulting in a loss of tail rotor effectiveness (LTE), after which the pilot was unable to recover control of the helicopter.
Probable cause
The pilot’s execution of a landing approach with a right, quartering tailwind, low forward airspeed, and high power demand that, when combined, resulted in a loss of tail rotor effectiveness and helicopter control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA011
- Event ID
- 20221009106087
- Case number
- ERA23LA011
- 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: 7eda3ab086689f7f8368d162bb392f20e2f028605c0976a6d3f697768201674c; retrieved 2026-09-16T16:13:23.406Z.