A king air pilot executed a go-around when the helicopter on approach ahead of him was hovering at l...

Narrative:

After entering the pattern at S50 there was a helicopter on downwind landing for runway 34. I had the helicopter in sight and flew the pattern to it. As I turned final the helicopter seemed to be taking a lot of time and I couldn't tell if he was going to land on the runway or on the taxiway so I inquired if he was landing on the runway. He responded that he was going around. I continued with the approach. The aircraft I was flying has poor visibility forward during landing. In the round out I caught sight of the helicopter about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way down the runway between 50-100 feet AGL and apparently stationary. I executed a go-around; sidestepped to the left to avoid a potentially dangerous situation; and advised the helicopter to go right. After I landed I was met by an NTSB inspector [who had witnessed the event] who said that they had been having issues with helicopters and I should stop by the airport office and report this incident. I do believe far 91.126 instructs a helicopter to avoid the flow of fixed wing aircraft.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A King Air pilot executed a go-around when the helicopter on approach ahead of him was hovering at low altitude over the runway as he was in the flare.

Narrative: After entering the pattern at S50 there was a helicopter on downwind landing for Runway 34. I had the helicopter in sight and flew the pattern to it. As I turned final the helicopter seemed to be taking a lot of time and I couldn't tell if he was going to land on the runway or on the taxiway so I inquired if he was landing on the runway. He responded that he was going around. I continued with the approach. The aircraft I was flying has poor visibility forward during landing. In the round out I caught sight of the helicopter about 1/2 to 3/4 of the way down the runway between 50-100 feet AGL and apparently stationary. I executed a go-around; sidestepped to the left to avoid a potentially dangerous situation; and advised the helicopter to go right. After I landed I was met by an NTSB inspector [who had witnessed the event] who said that they had been having issues with helicopters and I should stop by the airport office and report this incident. I do believe FAR 91.126 instructs a helicopter to avoid the flow of fixed wing aircraft.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1047726
Time
Date	201211
Local Time Of Day	1201-1800
Place
Locale Reference	S50.Airport
State Reference	WA
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Super King Air 200
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Flight Phase	Landing
Flight Plan	None
Person 1
Function	Pilot Flying Single Pilot
Qualification	Flight Crew Instrument Flight Crew Private
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 30 Flight Crew Total 1600 Flight Crew Type 160
Events
Anomaly	Conflict NMAC
Miss Distance	Horizontal 300 Vertical 100

A king air pilot executed a go-around when the helicopter on approach ahead of him was hovering at low altitude over the runway as he was in the flare.