ANC25LA091 · VU Holdings LLC/DBA Vanilla UN VA 001
VU Holdings LLC/DBA Vanilla UN VA 001 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Kenai Municipal Airport (ENA) to Kenai Municipal Airport (ENA)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC25LA091
- 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
- Ongoing
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- Government
- 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
VU Holdings LLC/DBA Vanilla UN VA 001
- Aircraft type
- Vanilla Un VA-001
- 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
- N246VU
- Operator
- Vu Holdings
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kenai Municipal Airport (ENA), Kenai, AKTo Kenai Municipal Airport (ENA), Kenai, AK
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2021)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 engine power (total)
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On August 20, 2025, at about 0632 Alaska daylight time, a Platform Aerospace VA 001 Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), N246VU, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident on a beachside cliff near Ninilchik, Alaska. The aircraft was unmanned. The aircraft was operated under Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations as a Public Use Armed Forces Aircraft on a Certificate of Authorization (COA) Waiver. According to the operator, the airplane was returning to Kenai Municipal Airport in Kenai Alaska after a 72-hour continuous flight to Shemya Island. While flying over open water at an altitude of 5500 ft msl, less than an hour from its expected return, the UAS experienced a total loss of engine power and began an uncommanded descent. While troubleshooting, the flight crew was able to briefly restore partial power after opening the wing fuel drain solenoid. However, this was not enough to maintain altitude. After further attempts to restore engine power were unsuccessful, the flight crew shutdown the engine, to arrest the descent rate, and began a power-off glide towards shore for an off-airport emergency landing. During the emergency landing, the UAS impacted a beachside cliff which resulted in substantial damage to the wings and fuselage. The wreckage has been moved to a secure location, and a detailed NTSB examination is pending.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC25LA091
- Event ID
- 20250820200833
- Case number
- ANC25LA091
- 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, coordinates. 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: a363e23f89528f4570bde467ce4ca1239df0ab8a812b4da570f2e46a3f471e3f; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:14:42.962Z.