CEN14CA098
2014-01-02 · Temple, Texas, United States · None · 1 aircraft · Status: Completed
Airport TPL
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The pilot's loss of control while landing on a mobile helipad.
Factual narrative
On January 2, 2014, about 1700 central standard time, a Bell 206B helicopter, N400XL, experienced a roll over while repositioning from the ramp to a mobile helipad. The pilot was not injured. The helicopter was registered to and operated by Engemann Aviation Services, LLC under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 as a personal flight. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed for the flight, which originated from Draughon-Miller Central Texas Regional Airport (KTPL) in Temple, Texas. The pilot reported he was relocating the helicopter from the parking ramp to a mobile helipad approximately 30 feet away. As the pilot lowered the helicopter onto the mobile helipad, the left rear skid slipped off the pad. The helicopter rolled over and impacted the ground on its right side. The rollover resulted in substantial damage to the main rotor head, including separation of the rotor blades, and separation of the tail boom. On January 2, 2014, about 1700 central standard time, a Bell 206B helicopter, N400XL, experienced a roll over while repositioning from the ramp to a mobile helipad. The pilot was not injured. The helicopter was registered to and operated by Engemann Aviation Services, LLC under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 as a personal flight. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed for the flight, which originated from Draughon-Miller Central Texas Regional Airport (KTPL) in Temple, Texas. The pilot reported he was relocating the helicopter from the parking ramp to a mobile helipad approximately 30 feet away. As the pilot lowered the helicopter onto the mobile helipad, the left rear skid slipped off the pad. The helicopter rolled over and impacted the ground on its right side. The rollover resulted in substantial damage to the main rotor head, including separation of the rotor blades, and separation of the tail boom. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12
NTSB Findings
FAA avdata. C = Cause, F = Factor.
- C Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-(general)-Not attained/maintained - C
- C Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Pilot - C
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2014_CEN14CA098.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Search this event elsewhere
External sources are reported, not agency: signal that something happened, not fact about what happened.
- TallyAero Live Wire Aviation press
- NTSB CAROL Agency ↗
- NTSB Docket Agency ↗
- Aviation Safety Network Aviation press ↗
- Kathryn's Report Aviation press ↗
- Aviation Herald Aviation press ↗
- AVweb Aviation press ↗
- Pilots of America Community ↗
- Reddit /r/flying Community ↗
- FlightAware Aviation press ↗
- AOPA accident database Aviation press ↗
- Google News News ↗
- DuckDuckGo News ↗
Related research
Matched on aircraft type or causal vocabulary (loss of control). All research papers
- Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons 2025 · Journal article (JAAER) A Scoping Review of Aviation Loss of Control Inflight Research
Loss of control – inflight (LOC-I) contributes to aircraft accidents at unacceptably high rates. Significant industry efforts and research have aimed to improve LOC-I prevention, detection, and recove…
- SKYbrary (Eurocontrol) 2024 · SKYbrary article Loss of Control In-Flight (LOC-I) — SKYbrary Knowledge Base
SKYbrary comprehensive knowledge-base entry on Loss of Control In-Flight — definitions, contributing factors, accident case studies (Air France 447, Colgan 3407), and prevention strategies.
- Semantic Scholar 2024 · Article (International Conference on Networking and Services) Risk Assessment of Loss of Control In-Flight Trajectories for Urban Air Mobility Safety
In Urban Air Mobility (UAM), maintaining a minimum separation between aircraft is a safety requirement, which becomes challenging amidst congested air traffic and off-nominal conditions, such as Loss …
- NTSB Aircraft Accident Reports 2022 · Accident report Loss of Control on Takeoff in Icing Conditions — Citation 560XL
Cessna Citation 560XL fatal takeoff icing accident, March 2018. Investigation of a Citation 560XL loss-of-control takeoff accident in icing conditions.
- Semantic Scholar 2021 · Article (Aviation) ANALYSIS OF GENERAL AVIATION FIXED-WING AIRCRAFT ACCIDENTS INVOLVING INFLIGHT LOSS OF CONTROL USING A STATE-BASED APPROACH
Inflight loss of control (LOC-I) is a significant cause of General Aviation (GA) fixed-wing aircraft accidents. The United States National Transportation Safety Board’s database provides a rich source…
- NASA NTRS 2021 · Presentation Use of Design of Experiments in Determining Neural Network Architectures for Loss of Control Detection
Abstract—We describe empirical methods for selecting a neural network architecture to implement belief state inference on generic commercial transport aircraft.