WPR25LA134 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Portland, OR (private airstrip) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA134
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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
- Not recorded
Bell 206B
- 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
- N16671
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland, OR (private airstrip)To not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 49 years (built 1976)
- 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
- En route
- 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 engine power (total)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On April 14, 2025, about 1800 Pacific daylight time, a Bell 206B, N16671, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Amboy, Washington. The pilot was not injured. The helicopter was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations, Part 91 personal flight. The pilot reported that he had been operating the helicopter for about one hour, practicing takeoff and landings. While about 800 ft above ground level (agl), he felt a shudder and heard the engine sounding differently, followed by the engine chip detector light illuminating and the engine losing power. He entered an autorotation, turned right to an open field, and landed with about a 20-knot tailwind. During the landing sequence, the tail skid contacted the ground initially followed by the tailboom separating near the elevators. The helicopter came to rest balanced on the right skid, right elevator and one main rotor blade. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the tailboom. A visual examination of the engine revealed damage to the compressor section. The helicopter was recovered to a secure facility for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA134
- Event ID
- 20250415200020
- Case number
- WPR25LA134
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2025-04-15.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7d23e472b44c547ea0001b1c36698f04cd8f9abc1ceb419122abdb027a791575; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:49:30.819Z.