SEA98FA084 · McDonnell Douglas 369FF
McDonnell Douglas 369FF · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Gooding Municipal Airport (GNG) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98FA084
- 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
- 1 · 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
McDonnell Douglas 369FF
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas 369
- 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
- N16031
- Operator
- Winco
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gooding Municipal Airport (GNG), Gooding, IDTo 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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
- 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 object
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Shoshone, ID, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Witnesses reported that the helicopter had just released from positioning a fiber optic cable on top of a power pole. An external line is hung over the left landing skid, forward of the front leg, and a shoe is used to cradle the cable to lift and position it in place for permanent attachment. A lineman was on the pole and in the process of permanently attaching the cable to the pole when the pilot maneuvered the helicopter away and behind the lineman about five feet. Another lineman was standing on the left side landing skid and was then going to install vibration dampers on the cable. The lineman on the pole stated that everything was normal when he heard what sounded like a clicking sound or a sound like a card in a spoked wheel. The lineman on the pole stated that he knew that the helicopter was in the wires and saw pieces of the helicopter flying. The lineman ducked down on the pole, and when he looked up again, the helicopter had already gone through the transmission wires and was laying on its right side on the ground. Impact signatures of a cable strike were found on both tailrotor blades. The cable that the helicopter was positioned next to was severed. Further inspection of the severed cable noted that 19 of the 22 strands that make up the fiber optic cable received varying amounts of mechanical damage prior to failure. During the post-crash wreckage documentation and inspection, no evidence was found to indicate a mechanical failure or malfunction.
Probable cause
Failure to maintain clearance from wires. A transmission wire was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98FA084
- Event ID
- 20001211X10412
- Case number
- SEA98FA084
- 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: 7d99bbfb6a3a74132f016475f8aa8103a187852625d064199df55472230c0624; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:33:57.678Z.