ANC95TA166 · Bell 206B
U.S. Dept. of Interior Bell 206B · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Gulkana Airport (GKN) to an unrecorded destination
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's injuries. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC95TA166
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
- N84TA
- Operator
- U.S. Dept. of Interior
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gulkana Airport (GKN), AKTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering · hover in ground effect
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft weight and balance › Exceeded
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and passenger of a Bell 206B helicopter, N84TA, overheard radio transmissions about a float equipped Cessna 180A, N94259, that had become inverted on a lake. The helicopter pilot and passenger attempted a rescue of the stranded pilot, who had been sitting on the inverted floats of the airplane for about 5 hours and displayed symptoms of severe hypothermia and shock. A 30 knot wind was producing 3 to 4 feet waves. As the helicopter was hovered next to the airplane, the passenger partially stepped into an external load basket on the right side of the helicopter and began to assist the stranded pilot aboard the helicopter. At about that time, the helicopter began to roll to the right, and the main rotor blades struck the surface of the lake. The helicopter then impacted the lake and sank. The stranded pilot was struck by the helicopter's landing gear skid tube during the crash and received a serious chest injury. The pilot of a third aircraft (float equipped Beaver) observed the events and landed on the lake to rescue all of the participants. (See: ID Number ANC95LA164 for the initial accident involving the Cessna 180.)
Probable cause
The pilot's improper in-flight planing/decision and inadequate supervision of the passenger, which allowed the helicopter's lateral center-of-gravity to be exceeded. Factors relating to the accident were: pressure (compelling influence) on the pilot and passenger that was induced by the need to rescue the stranded pilot from a life threatening situation, high winds, and large waves.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC95TA166
- Event ID
- 20001207X04416
- Case number
- ANC95TA166
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: 162688fa34c6b0677789ac72ae49b9b15db623f1704e79187435fc91aba6db42; retrieved 2026-09-21T13:05:01.227Z.