WPR24LA036 · Bell OH-58A
Edgefield Aviation Bell OH-58A · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA036
- 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 OH-58A
- Aircraft type
- Bell OH-58
- 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
- N103WC
- Operator
- Edgefield Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 54 years (built 1969)
- 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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 · hover
- 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 reported that he was relocating bundles of trees from the harvest field onto a truck bed. Approximately 30 minutes into the operation, the load hook did not immediately release when he was setting a bundle down. The pilot pressed the release button multiple times, as he had done in similar situations in the past. The helicopter’s momentum, as it moved back towards the field, caused the bundle to slide a few feet. One of the main rotor blades then struck the tail boom, and the other blade flapped down, cutting off the rear section of the tail boom, vertical stabilizer, and tail rotor. The helicopter spun several times before landing, resting flat on the skids. The landing impact was forceful enough to break the mast and dislodge the main transmission. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the main rotor, tail boom, vertical stabilizer, tail rotor, and transmission. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain helicopter control during an external load operation, which resulted in the helicopter’s main rotor blades impacting the tail boom.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA036
- Event ID
- 20231115193390
- Case number
- WPR24LA036
- 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: c3607d8e92570956da38fae52485876e57d59ad7d4406a3707644c3dd97d7932; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:17:49.415Z.