Temsco Helicopters Hughes 369D accident
Hughes 369D · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Gustavus Airport (PAGS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC07LA022
- 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
Hughes 369D
- Aircraft type
- Hughes 369
- 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
- N5134V
- Operator
- Temsco Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gustavus Airport (PAGS), Gustavus, 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
- Maneuvering · hover in ground effect
- 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
- Clearance › Inadequate
- Company/operator management › Procedure inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter was being operated as a visual flight rules on-demand passenger flight under Title 14, CFR Part 135. The purpose of the flight was to tranquilize moose for capture and collaring. The company's chief pilot said a moose was shot with a tranquilizer dart from the helicopter, and that the helicopter was used to block the moose from moving into a hazardous area. The pilot of an airplane orbiting above said the moose charged the helicopter, and that as the helicopter attempted to evade the moose, the moose reared, or jumped, contacting the helicopter's tail rotor. The helicopter pilot reported a loss of directional control, and made a hovering autorotation to the ground. The flex coupling between the drive shaft and the tail rotor gearbox failed, and the spinning drive shaft cut the tail boom and separated the tail from the rest of the airframe. According to the chief pilot, the company's practice had been for the helicopter to hover/maneuver about 10 feet above the ground, and no closer to the darted animal than 10 feet horizontally. He said the pilot and scientist aboard felt the distances were appropriate. He said this was the first incident of extreme, erratic, behavior on the part of a darted animal, and that due to this incident, the company has revised its procedure, and now requires the pilot to maintain 30 feet of altitude above the ground and 30 feet horizontally from a darted animal.
Probable cause
The inadequate clearance from a tranquilized moose while hovering in ground effect, and the operator's inadequate procedures for such operations, which resulted in an in-flight collision with the moose. Factors associated with the accident were the moose, a sheared tail rotor drive shaft, and the resultant lack of tail rotor anti-torque control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC07LA022
- Event ID
- 20070313X00285
- Case number
- ANC07LA022
- 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: 4f75ed7a996f095e6de2b8c63a045e77d69b1b818b29ae384bdd48fea7fafb11; retrieved 2026-09-18T14:46:32.604Z.