ANC06TA047 · American Eurocopter AS350 B3
American Eurocopter AS350 B3 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From Nikiski, AK to Soldotna, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC06TA047
- 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
- 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
American Eurocopter AS350 B3
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter 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
- N911AA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Nikiski, AKTo Soldotna, 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- 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 › 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 was transporting an Alaska State Trooper, and a rescue volunteer with their equipment, to a remote lodge to search for a missing person. The flight was conducted during dark night conditions, and the pilot was using night vision goggles (NVG) to help discern topographical features on the snow-covered terrain. After an uneventful outbound flight to the lodge, the pilot landed the helicopter on a frozen lake adjacent to the lodge. During an hour-long search of the lodge and surrounding outbuildings, snow fell, with a light accumulation on the frozen lake where the accident helicopter was parked. Unable to locate the missing person, the search team boarded the helicopter for the return flight, and the pilot donned his NVGs. Just after takeoff, as the helicopter transitioned from a hover to forward flight, blowing snow from the helicopter's main rotor momentarily reduced the pilot's visibility, and he lost all visual reference with the surface of the frozen lake. While he was attempting to regain a visual reference, the helicopter's tail rotor guard and vertical stabilizer struck the surface of the lake, and he elected to abort the takeoff. The helicopter's skids subsequently struck the surface of the ice, and the helicopter bounced several times before stopping. A postaccident inspection revealed substantial damage to the helicopter's vertical stabilizer, tail boom assembly, and fuselage. The pilot reported that there were no preaccident mechanical anomalies with the helicopter, and that he had not received any formal training in the use of NVG's.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain adequate altitude/clearance from terrain during an aborted takeoff in whiteout conditions, which resulted in an in-flight collision with terrain. A factor associated with the accident was whiteout conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC06TA047
- Event ID
- 20060502X00495
- Case number
- ANC06TA047
- 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: fa21c397fb522ee5eab03555a7d5212b33401d73f5b4282f1fcd8ed624e1ae85; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:58:43.706Z.