ANC98LA032 · Aerospatiale AS-350B
Aerospatiale AS-350B · Accident: roll over during landing
From Kenai River Airpark (1AK4) to Soldotna Airport (SXQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC98LA032
- 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
Aerospatiale AS-350B
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale AS-350
- 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
- N158EH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kenai River Airpark (1AK4), ROTOR AIRSTRIP, AKTo Soldotna Airport (SXQ)
- 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
- Landing
- 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
- Roll over
- 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
- Pilot in command › Dynamic rollover, inadvertent
- Pilot in command › Touchdown, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was practicing slope landings in preparation for an upcoming check ride. According to the pilot, he was positioning the helicopter close to the hill in order to start the maneuver. The next thing the pilot recalls, the helicopter had rolled to its left, and was upside down and on top of the hill that he was attempting to land beside. The day following the accident, the pilot reported that he now suspected that the tail rotor drive shaft became disengaged, and caused the accident. The forward tail rotor shaft assembly, and a portion of the adjoining rear tail rotor drive shaft were examined by the NTSB Materials Laboratory for inspection. The inspection discovered no evidence of an in-flight disengagement of the tail rotor drive shaft assembly prior to impact.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadvertent dynamic rollover while performing a slope landing. Factors associated with the accident are the presence of rough and uneven terrain, and the pilot's improper slope landing technique.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC98LA032
- Event ID
- 20001211X09623
- Case number
- ANC98LA032
- 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: f931e47b88e444949eca3572a4b6d602c1ad2a9f25176eab78eeed9a6de1b960; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:52:36.924Z.