ANC13CA035 · Eurocopter AS350B3
Soloy Helicopters Eurocopter AS350B3 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Stevens Village Airport (SVS) to Stevens Village Airport (SVS)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC13CA035
- 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
Eurocopter AS350B3
- Aircraft type
- Eurocopter 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
- N353DL
- Operator
- Soloy Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stevens Village Airport (SVS), Stevens Village, AKTo Stevens Village Airport (SVS), Stevens Village, 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
- Landing
- 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
- Loss of control on ground
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter pilot was supporting a seismic drilling operation at a remote drill site. He had just completed moving one of the seismic drills via long line and had landed the high-skid, turbine-powered helicopter in a clear area to wait for the next move. After landing, before reducing the power to flight idle and locking the flight controls, the pilot opened the right-side door, returned his right hand to the cyclic, and leaned out to ensure the tail rotor was clear of obstacles. While looking rearward, the pilot inadvertently moved the cyclic to the right, and the helicopter rolled up on the right skid. He immediately applied left cyclic, but the main rotor blades struck the snow. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the rotor system, tail boom, and fuselage. The pilot indicated there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot noted that the accident might have been avoided if he had used the collective lock before engaging in activities outside the cockpit.
Probable cause
The pilot’s inadvertent cyclic control input after landing, which resulted in the main rotor blades striking the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC13CA035
- Event ID
- 20130326X10640
- Case number
- ANC13CA035
- 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: 73ac8e6f3f1d920b86defebbc64b7e6e262833322d35ecdfb9dcda31b65fd163; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:09:44.168Z.