ANC02LA018 · Aerospatiale AS350-B
Aerospatiale AS350-B · Accident: in flight collision with object during landing
From Girdwood-Alyeska Airport (AQY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC02LA018
- 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
Aerospatiale AS350-B
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale AS350
- 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
- N6080D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Girdwood-Alyeska Airport (AQY), Girdwood, 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
- 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
- Antenna
- 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 › Distance, 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 commercial certificated pilot was transporting a radio techinian to a remote radio repeater site in a helicopter. The area near the repeater site was snow covered. During the landing, one main rotor blade on the accident helicopter struck a radio antenna. The pilot was not aware of any collision with the antenna at the time of the landing, but discovered damage to a main rotor blade later in the day. The damaged rotor blade was removed and a replacement blade installed. The damaged rotor blade was returned to the manufacturer in France for repair.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate distance from a radio antenna during landing. A factor was the presence of an antenna.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC02LA018
- Event ID
- 20020318X00361
- Case number
- ANC02LA018
- 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: 8128865b9c549e3f294bc6cd061b7fda7650657e28cbe8ff41865b4de1cbaaab; retrieved 2026-09-18T16:05:55.789Z.