Kenai Air Alaska Bell 206L-1 accident
Bell 206L-1 · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Kenai Municipal Airport (ENA) to Tyonek, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC01LA030
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 206L-1
- 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
- N80KA
- Operator
- Kenai Air Alaska
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kenai Municipal Airport (ENA), Kenai, AKTo Tyonek, 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
- 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
- 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 · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport certificated helicopter pilot was transporting oil field personnel to an offshore oil producing platform. The pilot said that wind conditions, in conjunction with various platform mounted obstructions, required that he plan his approach to the left side of the helipad, then "side slip" to the right and over the helipad. He said that as he terminated his approach, and moved the helicopter to the right and over the helipad, the tail rotor struck a handrail that was adjacent to the helipad. The helicopter sustained substantial in-flight damage to the tail rotor blades, main rotor blades, and horizontal stabilizer. The pilot reported that wind conditions at the time of the accident were from the northeast at 25 knots.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate tail rotor clearance while maneuvering to land.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC01LA030
- Event ID
- 20010222X00495
- Case number
- ANC01LA030
- 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, coordinates. 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: 35af040589df55a3eb1fb009c1f46debb921eb390caa9b7403d2dfd0e8b3e5e0; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:17:27.501Z.