CEN25LA232 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during initial climb
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's registration. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA232
- 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
- 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 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
- N16726 Possible conflict
- Operator
- Aeroag
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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 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
- Initial climb
- 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 (partial)
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On July 1, 2025, at 0845 central daylight time, a Bell 206B, N17626, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Edgerton, Missouri. The commercial pilot was uninjured. The helicopter was operated under Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations as a Part 137 aerial application flight. The pilot stated that during a departure climb, he heard the engine surge and saw the main rotor speed decrease. He said that he pulled back on the cyclic to slow down and lowered the collective slightly to see if he could regain rotor speed, while the helicopter was about 150-200 feet agl and the airspeed was about 45-50 kts. He then heard the engine shut down. He immediately lowered the collective and turned the aircraft slightly to the south to attempt a landing to a grass pasture. During the landing, the helicopter sustained substantial damage to the tailboom, a tail rotor blade, and the main rotor blades. The helicopter was retained for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA232
- Event ID
- 20250702200449
- Case number
- CEN25LA232
- 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. 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: 0ddc34a43507a3cc8eb1c79e52ce992d8c85f15be7176e0f6f9be397fb13d62a; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:02:13.086Z.