ANC12CA100 · Aerospatiale AS350 B2
Last Frontier Air Venture Aerospatiale AS350 B2 · Accident while standing
From Talkeetna, AK to Talkeetna, AK
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC12CA100
- 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
Aerospatiale AS350 B2
- Aircraft type
- Aerospatiale 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
- N178CH
- Operator
- Last Frontier Air Venture
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Talkeetna, AKTo Talkeetna, 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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
- Standing · engine(s) operating
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot landed a high-skid, turbine-powered helicopter at a remote construction site, which contained several bags of cement that were covered by a plastic tarp. The plastic tarp was secured by a nylon strap that was wrapped around the bags. The pilot reported that after landing near the bags of cement, he retarded the engine throttle to flight idle to begin the mandatory 2-minute engine cool down procedure. During the engine cool down, the pilot felt an abrupt airframe vibration, so he immediately closed the engine throttle and performed an emergency engine shutdown. A postflight inspection revealed that the plastic tarp had dislodged from the nylon strap, and it subsequently became entangled in the tail rotor hub and blade assembly. As a result, the helicopter sustained substantial damage to the tail rotor drive system and tailboom. The pilot said there were no preaccident mechanical anomalies with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The entanglement of a plastic tarp in the helicopter’s tail rotor after becoming dislodged from its securement.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC12CA100
- Event ID
- 20120904X75224
- Case number
- ANC12CA100
- 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. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-09-01.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 180d778f18e8515299a363b893e12d15a67b172cc439145d0bbb703b1ced954a; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:41:36.667Z.