WPR23LA059 · Bell 206-L4
Bell Textron Bell 206-L4 · Accident: hard landing
From Bell Helicopter Hurst Heliport (0TE2) to Bell South Airfield Heliport (XS04)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA059
- 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
- 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 206-L4
- 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
- N2036F
- Operator
- Bell Textron
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bell Helicopter Hurst Heliport (0TE2), Hurst, TXTo Bell South Airfield Heliport (XS04), Fort Worth, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 27 years (built 1995)
- 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 · 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that, during the instructional flight practicing autorotations, the pilot receiving instruction flared the helicopter in a more pronounced nose up attitude, an aft cyclic and higher descent rate, but not excessive enough to require him to take control. During the landing, the main rotor blades contacted the tail boom. The tail rotor driveshaft and vertical fins were substantially damaged during the landing. The flight instructor reported that there were no of preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter that would preclude normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper landing flare, which resulted in a hard landing. Contributing to the accident, was the flight instructor’s inadequate supervision.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA059
- Event ID
- 20221207106430
- Case number
- WPR23LA059
- 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: 521c7677318fd25975b20f9394136e47e777e6d92690c4d6ad43d4f83cf5cbc1; retrieved 2026-09-16T16:32:23.690Z.