ERA23LA319 · Bell Helicopter Textron Canada 407
Charleston County Sheriff's Office Bell Helicopter Textron Canada 407 · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure on approach
From Sumter Airport (SMS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA319
- 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 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
- N31PB
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sumter Airport (SMS), Sumter, SCTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 11 years (built 2012)
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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 systems
- 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 reported that, about 35 minutes into the flight, he noticed that the helicopter began to yaw to the right and his pedal inputs did not correct the situation. He contacted the tower at his destination and declared an emergency. As he approached the runway for a straight-in landing, the helicopter yawed again. He lowered the collective, but the helicopter continued to yaw right. He then reduced the throttle and attempted to maintain a level attitude. The helicopter struck the ground at a high rate of descent, coming to rest in the grass adjacent to runway. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the fuselage, main rotor system, and tail rotor system. A postaccident examination of the helicotper found one of the two bolts that secured the tail rotor pitch change lever assembly was missing. The lever assembly was disconnected from the trunnion, resulting in the loss of tail rotor control. The other bolt that connected the levers to the rod assembly was in place, but loose; the cotter pin for its attachment nut was missing. A review of the maintenance records revealed that a 300 hour/3 month inspection was performed on the helicopter about 15.4 flight hours before the accident. According to the helicopter manufacturer, that recent inspection would not have required removal of the lever assembly bolts; however, the nuts and bolts should have been clearly visible during the inspection of the area. The mechanic who performed the inspection stated that he must have overlooked them.
Probable cause
A failure of the tail rotor pitch change lever assembly due to incorrectly installed bolts and maintenance personnel’s inadequate inspection of the tail rotor control system.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA319
- Event ID
- 20230802192772
- Case number
- ERA23LA319
- 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: 8d62c1b77e04ab56a19611be2bcef8d272df418faa91d964e0b35d35c0b6cbdb; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:56:57.703Z.