Wright Air Service Helio H-295 accident
Helio H-295 · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing during initial climb
From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI) to Healy, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC09LA023
- 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
Helio H-295
- Aircraft type
- Helio H-295
- Category
- Airplane
- 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
- N6478V
- Operator
- Wright Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks International Airport (FAI), Fairbanks, AKTo Healy, 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 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
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 pilot was on an on-demand air taxi passenger flight in a ski-equipped airplane. The pilot said that the accident occurred while he was packing snow at the landing site by laying down tracks with the airplane's skis in preparation for landing. During the last pass, he said that as the airplane lifted off the snow, the wings encountered high brush; when he pulled back on the elevator control to clear the brush, he said that he believed that the tail ski contacted the snow and dragged the airplane down into the brush. The pilot said that there were no known mechanical problems with the airplane prior to the accident. The fuselage and empennage sustained structural damage during the encounter with brush and terrain.
Probable cause
The pilot's delay in initiating a climb while he was packing snow with the airplane's skis in preparation for landing, resulting in a collision with brush.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC09LA023
- Event ID
- 20090314X10623
- Case number
- ANC09LA023
- 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: 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 2009-03-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f0e425a6a9f86a08eae0b55aea5ea4d540121848e608d848d547648cd9d84264; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:50:19.772Z.