NTSB CAROL · Event
Event ANC17LA025
Registry · N207CH
FAA Aircraft Registry record.
Make / Model
CESSNA 207
Year of manufacture
1969 · 48 years old at event
Engine
CONT MOTOR IO-520-F (300 hp)
Seats / Engines
6 seats · 1 engine
Last airworthiness date
20250214
ADS-B equipped
Yes — Mode-S A1AC3E
Registrant of record
AVIATION TRUST CO LLC TRUSTEE
Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The pilot's decision to depart into an area of degraded visual meteorological and flat light conditions, which resulted in a loss of visual references and subsequent controlled flight into terrain.
Factual narrative
HISTORY OF FLIGHT
On May 22, 2017, about 1805 Alaska daylight time, an Airbus AS350 B2 helicopter, N207CH, was substantially damaged when it collided with snow-covered mountainous terrain after departing a remote landing site on the Herbert Glacier, about 21 miles north of Juneau, Alaska. The commercial pilot and three passengers sustained minor injuries; three additional passengers were not injured. The helicopter was registered to and operated by Coastal Helicopters Inc. as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 135 on-demand air taxi flight. Degraded visual meteorological conditions were reported on the glacier at the time of the accident, and company flight following procedures were in effect for the flight, which originated from Juneau International Airport (JNU), Juneau, Alaska, at 1743. The purpose of the accident flight was to transport five cruise ship passengers who had completed a dogsledding shore excursion and one musher back to the operator's headquarters at JNU. The operator was contracted to provide helicopter transportation to and from the glacier where the dogsledding was conducted (known as "dog camp"). The accident passengers had been transported to the dog camp in the accident helicopter by another pilot. The pilot then returned to JNU, where he picked up another set of passengers to transport back to the glacier. The accident helicopter was one of a flight of two company helicopters that departed for the glacier. While en route, the pilot noted deteriorating weather conditions "moving up the glacier" that consisted of "swirling clouds." The pilot reported the conditions via radio to the operator's headquarters, then the pilots of both helicopters elected to return to JNU. Upon landing, the passengers disembarked, and the two pilots were replaced by other company pilots, who were permitted to fly in lower weather conditions; the two helicopters then departed empty to pick up the passengers on the glacier. The accident pilot stated that en route, the cloud ceilings and visibility were "really good," and she noted a "few clouds moving around" as she neared the glacier. After landing at the dog camp and boarding passengers, the other helicopter departed first, followed by the accident helicopter. The pilot reported that she took off and proceeded down the glacier; about 3/4 mile from the camp, she noted an area of fog along the intended route of flight and chose to return to the dog camp to wait for conditions to improve. She turned the helicopter toward a rocky area in order to maintain visual contact with the ground when, during the turn, the helicopter impacted snow-covered, featureless terrain and came to rest inverted. One passenger reported that he "could not see anything" as the helicopter departed "because of the thick fog." Another passenger described seeing "white everywhere" and stated that "you couldn't tell the sky from the ground."
FLIGHT RECORDERS
The helicopter did not carry, nor was required to carry, a crashworthy flight data recorder. At the time of the accident, the operator did not have a formal flight data monitoring program in place, nor was it required to have one.
SURVIVAL ASPECTS
After the helicopter impacted terrain, the passenger seated in the far-right seat of the cabin was unable to activate the buckle of the 3-point restraint system to egress from the inverted helicopter. The pilot noticed that the passenger appeared to be disoriented. The pilot used a personal Leatherman multi-tool to cut through the belt material and release the passenger. The passenger then egressed from the helicopter without further incident. After another company pilot returned to base due to deteriorating weather conditions en route, the instrument-rated commercial helicopter pilot flew to a remote glacier to pick up passengers. Upon departing from the glacier, the pilot encountered deteriorating visibility and flat light conditions. She decided to turn back to the departure point and land to wait for conditions to improve; however, during the turn, the helicopter impacted the featureless, snow-covered terrain and came to rest inverted. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation with the helicopter, and the accident is consistent with the pilot's failure to maintain clearance from terrain while operating in poor visibility and flat light conditions, which obscured features of the terrain and resulted in a loss of visual clues regarding the helicopter's distance from the ground. The operator assigned different weather minimums to each of its pilots depending on their experience level. The accident pilot was classified at the highest experience level and was permitted to fly in conditions as low as 1/2 mile visibility, cloud ceilings 300 ft above ground level (agl), and from remote sites with the potential for white out conditions. The estimated conditions reported from the landing site shortly before the accident included 1 1/2 miles visibility with fog and ceilings about 1,500 ft agl, though previous observations indicated that fog had begun developing about an hour before the accident occurred and that conditions had continued to deteriorate since that time. Though the reported weather conditions were above the minimums specified by the company's operations manual, it is possible that the pilot felt pressure to complete the flight given that she was classified as more experienced; it is also possible that the pilot and/or operator felt pressure to conduct the flight because there were no formal procedures in place in the event that passengers were required to remain on the glacier for an extended time due to a contingency such as weather conditions that prohibited flight. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12
NTSB Findings
Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).
- C Personnel issues-Action/decision-Info processing/decision-Decision making/judgment-Pilot - C
- C Personnel issues-Psychological-Perception/orientation/illusion-Situational awareness-Pilot - C
- C Personnel issues-Psychological-Attention/monitoring-Monitoring environment-Pilot - C
- C Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Altitude-Not attained/maintained - C
- C Environmental issues-Conditions/weather/phenomena-Ceiling/visibility/precip-Below VFR minima-Decision related to condition - C
- F Personnel issues-Psychological-Personality/attitude-Motivation/respond to pressure-Pilot - F
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2017_ANC17LA025.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Beyond the agency record
Search this event elsewhere.
Pre-filled searches into the sources where news + community discussion of aviation events lives. External sources are reported, not agency. Treat them as signal that something happened, not as fact about what happened.
Entity-clustered aviation events in the press — last 24 hr + 30-day archive.
Official agency record + docket.
Investigative docket: factual reports, photos, transcripts.
Long-running aviation incident database (Flight Safety Foundation).
Community NTSB synthesis blog — often has photos and witness reports.
Gold-standard aviation incident blog.
Aviation industry news search.
GA pilot forum — informed but rumor-prone.
GA pilot subreddit search.
Tail-number page — flight history (free tier limited).
AOPA Air Safety Institute search.
Mainstream press coverage. Recent events only.
Privacy-preserving news search.
External links open in a new tab. We don't ingest their content; we deep-link search queries.
Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (controlled flight into terrain). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.
- Flight Safety Foundation 2023 · FSF / AeroSafety World
Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) — A 2023 Industry Refresh
Foundation 2023 CFIT data refresh — three decades after the original CFIT Task Force eliminated >95% of air-carrier CFIT, the GA + Part 135 communities still account for most CFIT fatalities.
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Technical Publication (TP)
Flight Simulator Evaluation of Synthetic Vision Display Concepts to Prevent Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT)
In commercial aviation, over 30-percent of all fatal accidents worldwide are categorized as Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) accidents, where a fully functioning airplane is inadvertently flown i…
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Other
Preliminary Effect of Synthetic Vision Systems Displays to Reduce Low-Visibility Loss of Control and Controlled Flight Into Terrain Accidents
An experimental investigation was conducted to study the effectiveness of Synthetic Vision Systems (SVS) flight displays as a means of eliminating Low Visibility Loss of Control (LVLOC) and Controlled…
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Technical Memorandum (TM)
Rating the Relevance of QUORUM-Selected ASRS Incident Narratives to a "Controlled Flight into Terrain" Accident
An exploratory study was conducted to identify commercial aviation incidents that are relevant to a "controlled flight into terrain" (CFIT) accident using a NASA-developed text processing method.
- Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons 2001 · Journal article (JAAER)
Controlled Flight into Terrain: How the Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration are Addressing the Problem
Controlled Flight into Terrain (CFIT) is not a new problem. It has been around since the beginning of manned flight. A CFIT accident occurs when an airworthy aircraft, under the control of a pilot, is…
- Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons 2023 · Conference paper
Aircraft Energy Management: A Best Practice for Integrating Safety and Efficiency
Aircraft Energy Management: A Best Practice for Integrating Safety and Efficiency The airplane is the quintessential energy system, constantly transforming, transferring, distributing, storing, and ex…
Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗