ANC96LA154 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From COLORADO, AK to TEKLANIKA LAKE, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC96LA154
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Instrument 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
- N7982J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From COLORADO, AKTo TEKLANIKA LAKE, AK
- 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 135: Air Taxi & Commuter
- 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 · cruise
- 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- 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
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and 2 passengers departed in a helicopter on a flight over a large mountain range. Weather conditions along the intended route of flight, following a highway through a large pass, included low ceilings, snow, and fog. The area forecast included an AIRMET for marginal VFR and temporary IFR conditions. The pilot made several telephone calls to an FAA flight service station and his company office in the area of the pass to access the weather conditions. He decided to cross the mountain range in an area 23 miles west of the first intended route, over a small mountain pass. During flight over the pass, he encountered low ceilings with snow and fog. He entered whiteout conditions and began a turn to reverse direction. The pilot became disoriented and the helicopter collided with snow covered terrain at an elevation of about 5,300 feet.
Probable cause
the pilot's continued VFR flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). The terrain conditions, low ceiling, fog, and whiteout conditions were related factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC96LA154
- Event ID
- 20001208X06664
- Case number
- ANC96LA154
- 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: e601634ace3156a1d7ba9d864c5bb201c0befec40e984c929382fe2fd576625a; retrieved 2026-09-18T17:46:40.927Z.