ANC15CA012 · Bell 206B B
Bell 206B B · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAAQ) to Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAAQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC15CA012
- 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
Bell 206B B
- Aircraft type
- Bell 206
- 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
- N86TA
- Operator
- Lee John S
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAAQ), Palmer, AKTo Warren "Bud" Woods Palmer Municipal Airport (PAAQ), Palmer, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 40 years (built 1975)
- 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- 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 in flight
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The solo helicopter pilot was flying a turbine-powered helicopter, equipped with dual controls, while seated in the left seat.
A limitation in the rotorcraft flight manual states, in part: "the minimum flight crew consists of one pilot who shall operate the helicopter from the right crew seat."
The N2 governor linear actuator control switch is located on the collective control for the right crew seat only. The pilot reported that flying the helicopter from the left seat and in order to manipulate this control switch, he had to take his left hand off the collective control for the left crew seat, and place it on the left crew seat cyclic control, then take his right hand off the left crew seat cyclic control and place it on the collective control for the right crew seat.
The pilot said that while in a 6-foot hover above a frozen lake, he became distracted while adjusting the N2 (rotor) rpm using the linear actuator control switch, and the helicopter became unstable and it began to rapidly descend. He attempted to recover from the unstable condition, but the helicopter's skids struck the ice. After the impact, he was able to recover and regain a stable hover above the ice. Believing that just the helicopter's skids were damaged during the impact, the pilot elected to return to his departure airport, about 19 miles away, where emergency services would be available.
During the return flight, as the helicopter climbed to about 50 feet above the ground, all engine power was lost. The pilot entered an emergency autorotation and selected an area of snow-cover as an emergency landing site.
The pilot's postaccident inspection of the helicopter revealed that during the initial impact on the frozen lake, the aft landing gear cross-tube assembly had been crushed into the aft portion of the fuselage, which subsequently ruptured the fuel cell, resulting in the loss of all fuel onboard.
The pilot stated there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control while hovering at a low altitude, which resulted in an impact with frozen lake ice. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to operate the helicopter from the left seat contrary to the rotorcraft flight manual, and the decision to continue the flight after the initial impact.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC15CA012
- Event ID
- 20150311X02544
- Case number
- ANC15CA012
- 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: d5e131b153d6d1bf080de76bd5e1e68eb8ee9ada7e9127bb75194f39154351dd; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:08:29.570Z.