CEN24LA259 · Bell 206L-3
Vertical Vegetation Management Bell 206L-3 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From Thorntown, IN to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN24LA259
- 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 206L-3
- 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
- N206WX
- Operator
- Vertical Vegetation Management
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Thorntown, INTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 42 years (built 1982)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 systems
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
- 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 was conducting agricultural flight operations in a helicopter using a truck and trailer as a refueling/loading base. Before the takeoff, the helicopter was reloaded with fungicide and fuel while on the truck trailer. The pilot inadvertently departed with the agricultural load hose still connected to the helicopter. The pilot reported that the helicopter yawed suddenly after liftoff, due to the connected load hose, which he perceived as a loss of engine power. The pilot made an immediate hard landing in an adjacent cornfield, during which the main rotor system deflected down and struck the tail. The tailboom and vertical fins were substantially damaged during the hard landing. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operations. The pilot opined that the accident might have been prevented with the use of a checklist, better radio communication with the ground crew, and the use of a breakaway fitting on the load hose.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to ensure that the load hose was disconnected from the helicopter before takeoff, which resulted in a loss of control after liftoff and a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN24LA259
- Event ID
- 20240709194656
- Case number
- CEN24LA259
- 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: 78c40e95aa57919338e03488fd2b73f0ede255866f2226c07b1a5f7870a3b4ca; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:01:32.556Z.