ANC00LA053 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during landing
From Homer Airport (PAHO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC00LA053
- 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
- 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
- N301MH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Homer Airport (PAHO), Homer, 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 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Flare, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During an on-demand passenger flight, the airline transport certificated pilot was landing a helicopter at a lake gauging station. The gauging station was surrounded by snow-covered terrain. His two passengers were conducting snow pack studies around the lake. Flat light conditions existed at the lake, and light drizzle was falling. The pilot was utilizing the gauging station as his landing reference point, but during the landing approach, he flew past the station and had no other visual references. The skids of the helicopter contacted the snow, and the pilot applied upward collective pitch. He attempted to stabilize the helicopter in a hover, but began drifting forward and to the left. The left landing gear skid contacted the snow, and the helicopter rolled onto its left side. A passenger described the weather conditions at the landing site as the 'inside of a ping pong ball.' The pilot recommended additional white-out training as a way to prevent the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudging the landing flare in whiteout/flat light conditions. Factors associated with the accident are the whiteout and flat lighting conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC00LA053
- Event ID
- 20001212X20932
- Case number
- ANC00LA053
- 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: 23ea9efcc2235436152e3cea7aa81ba44cf3cfeb929b99413ecf8530f186bba1; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:39:00.921Z.