ANC05TA111 · McDonnell Douglas 500D
U. S. Department of the Interior McDonnell Douglas 500D · Accident: in flight collision with object during landing
From Last Chance, AK to Delta Junction, AK
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's flight rules. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC05TA111
- 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
- Government
- 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 500D
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas 500
- 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
- C-GBUY
- Operator
- U. S. Department of the Interior
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Last Chance, AKTo Delta Junction, 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
- Public Aircraft Narrative disagrees
- 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 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Altitude/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 pilot, flying in support of a public use operation, landed the helicopter at an off-airport site to pickup two passengers. After takeoff, the passengers told the pilot that the main rotor blades contacted a small tree during landing. Upon landing at his destination, the pilot inspected the blades, and found dents/scratches in the bottom skins of the blades. The blades were determined to be damaged beyond repair.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain clearance from trees during the approach to landing, which resulted in the main rotor blades striking a tree. A factor associated with the accident was the tree.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC05TA111
- Event ID
- 20050902X01372
- Case number
- ANC05TA111
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (5)
- 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: 12794e24c6530d5e31790f2a65c252f93ff2c4bb36e01b0699ecb2266f62b6e9; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:35:11.088Z.
- Corrected after a review of the NTSB narrative, which states these values explicitly: operation. The narrative states "The airline transport certificated pilot, flying in support of a public use operation" (operator U. S. Department of the Interior); the flight was a public aircraft operation, not Part 91 general aviation.