Northern Skies Aviation Schweizer 269C accident
Schweizer 269C · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing
From Buffalo, WY to Buffalo, WY
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX08LA196
- 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
Schweizer 269C
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer 269
- 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
- N432MS
- Operator
- Northern Skies Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Buffalo, WYTo Buffalo, WY
- 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
- Takeoff · rejected takeoff
- Defining eventThe 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter pilot was picking up a biologist who was conducting land surveys. Prior to landing he circled the landing zone to observe the wind conditions. During the landing approach he transitioned out of effective translational lift earlier than expected, and attributed this to a reduced headwind caused by the enclosed terrain. During departure and acceleration to effective translational lift speed, the rotor speed began to decay. The ground speed was faster than he anticipated so he lowered the collective, and added forward cyclic, but could not maintain enough rotor speed for sustained flight. The pilot elected to land the helicopter ahead on a 30-degree uphill slope. After landing, the helicopter rolled back and the tail rotor made contact with the ground causing substantial damage to the tail rotor drive system. After the accident the pilot noted that the winds had shifted 180 degrees from his initial pre-accident observation.
Probable cause
The pilot's attempted downwind takeoff that resulted in an aborted takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the unsuitable terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX08LA196
- Event ID
- 20080708X00988
- Case number
- LAX08LA196
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. 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: 7fc4df907957fdade0f54d7c8ce1e057b97e052d17c4b13a059ab13b9b10e909; retrieved 2026-09-15T09:51:42.009Z.