JayHawk Air Robinson R44 accident
Robinson R44 · Accident: cargo shift en route
From Skwentna, AK to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC06LA064
- 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
Robinson R44
- Aircraft type
- Robinson R44
- 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
- N688JK
- Operator
- JayHawk Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Skwentna, 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Cargo shift
- 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
- External load cable/hook › Entangled
- Pilot in command › Loading of cargo, improper
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 helicopter pilot was transporting an external sling load and a passenger from a remote off-airport site on a Title 14, CFR Part 135 on-demand air taxi flight. He stated that after lifting a relatively light load on a short sling line, he transitioned to cruise flight. Shortly after entering cruise flight, he said he inadvertently allowed the cargo and sling line to strike the tail rotor blades. The cargo/cable disabled the tail rotor, and the pilot was unable to maintain control of the helicopter. The helicopter subsequently collided with terrain during the ensuing forced landing. The pilot indicated that there were no preimpact mechanical problems with the helicopter.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper rigging of the external sling load, which allowed the suspended load/cargo cable to entangle and disable the tail rotor control, resulting in a loss of control during cruise and an in-flight collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC06LA064
- Event ID
- 20060531X00646
- Case number
- ANC06LA064
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2006-05-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 9a4a2b75d8b9da703992befbcb30c287cef4cde2cc4cd9f0323fbe2403cc1525; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:53:00.262Z.
- The NTSB's operator name is blank for N688JK; the operator shown is the name the NTSB records it doing business as.