ANC23FA031 · Bell Helicopter Textron 407
Bell Helicopter Textron 407 · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From French Valley Airport (F70) to Big Bear City Airport (L35)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC23FA031
- 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 Helicopter Textron 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
- N14Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From French Valley Airport (F70), Murrietta, CATo Big Bear City Airport (L35), Big Bear, CA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and passenger departed in the helicopter on a personal flight over rough hilly terrain. The pilot’s cell phone was enabled with a crash notification feature, which initiated a call to a family member to notify them there may have been an accident. The family member notified first responders, and the wreckage was located near the peak of a rocky hilltop. Video recovered from cameras mounted on the outside of the helicopter shows the helicopter took off and made two low-level passes over terrain. As the pilot approached the crest of a ridgeline, he initiated a steep right turn. As the helicopter passed a rocky outcrop at the top of the hill, the main rotor blade contacted the terrain. Fragments of main rotor blades can be seen across the entire view of the camera. Reviewed medical evidence for the pilot and pilot-rated passenger indicated that they both had some risk factors for an impairing or incapacitating cardiovascular event. Although such an event cannot be excluded by autopsy evidence alone, there was no autopsy evidence that such an event occurred, and the accident circumstances were not consistent with a sudden medical event. Thus, it is unlikely that the pilot’s or pilot-rated passenger’s medical conditions contributed to the accident. Examination of the helicopter revealed no anomalies with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s decision to maneuver in a steep bank at a low altitude, which resulted in his failure to maintain clearance with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC23FA031
- Event ID
- 20230324106951
- Case number
- ANC23FA031
- 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: 30dde1a9e77950a446d29001fc5e435519563b7258b61dc1d8904f32378908be; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:57:58.766Z.