LAX97GA325 · Bell 205A-1
National Park Service Bell 205A-1 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during initial climb
From William R Fairchild International Airport (CLM) to William R Fairchild International Airport (CLM)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's operation. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX97GA325
- 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
- 3 · 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
- Government Narrative disagrees
- 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 205A-1
- Aircraft type
- Bell 205
- 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
- N90HJ
- Operator
- National Park Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From William R Fairchild International Airport (CLM), Port Angeles, WATo William R Fairchild International Airport (CLM)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- 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 collision with terrain/water
- 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 › Flight into known adverse weather, intentional
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The public-use helicopter was being operated in a joint effort search for a missing hiker outside of the park. The single pilot had landed at a remote landing zone in mountainous terrain to retrieve seven search and rescue personnel plus a dog. The pilot advised the SAR personnel to load quick, as he had no intentions of spending the night there. The pilot held up five fingers to ground personnel, who assumed that meant to wait 5 minutes for the obscuration to clear. However, in less than that time, the helicopter performed a vertical takeoff in the obscuration. According to the remaining SAR personnel, they lost sight of the helicopter about 50 feet agl. They continued to hear the helicopter to the time of a collision sound, followed by the sound of an avalanche. The remaining SAR personnel departed the landing zone for cover.
Probable cause
the pilot's intentional flight into known adverse weather conditions in mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX97GA325
- Event ID
- 20001208X08876
- Case number
- LAX97GA325
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 8e8c5948fd5665b052b3499a4fe0f958fc4d7aa499171e60d466d852e33f18e9; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:49:28.596Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: operation. The narrative states "The public-use helicopter was being operated in a joint effort search for a missing hiker"; the operator was the National Park Service, so the flight was a public aircraft operation, not Part 91 general aviation.