Wright Air Service Helio H 295 accident
Helio H 295 · Accident: landing gear collapse during takeoff
From Fairbanks, AK to Fairbanks, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC16LA067
- 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
- N6464V
- Operator
- Wright Air Service
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fairbanks, AKTo Fairbanks, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1969)
- 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
- 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
- Landing gear collapse
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft systems
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The airline transport pilot was departing from a remote unimproved airstrip. He stated that, as he initiated the takeoff, everything seemed normal. About 300 ft into the takeoff roll, the airplane veered sharply left, exited the airstrip, and impacted brush and trees, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and left horizontal stabilator. A postaccident examination of the airplane revealed that the tailwheel had separated from its attachment point and folded underneath the empennage.
Visual and magnified optical examinations revealed deformation and fracture patterns consistent with an overstress failure. Although fatigue cracks were observed in the fractured left arm of the tailwheel A-frame, they were relatively small and would not likely have caused a failure without abnormal loading. Additionally, the fractures in the left arm initiated not only at the fatigue cracks but also at locations away from the fatigue cracks, consistent with an overstress fracture. It is likely that the tailwheel A-frame fractured due to excessive side loads on the frame, which led to the tailwheel separating and the subsequent loss of control.
Probable cause
Excessive side loads imposed on the tailwheel A-frame during the takeoff roll, which resulted in a separation of the tailwheel and the subsequent loss of directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC16LA067
- Event ID
- 20160920X74309
- Case number
- ANC16LA067
- 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: b14593fe9e2d38794359e034ac33c918f29b326405b18bba72f24812d81adb04; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:17:17.773Z.