CHI99LA130 · Bell 206B
Bell 206B · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Crystal Airport (MIC) to Cloquet Carlton County Airport (COQ)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI99LA130
- 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
- 0
- 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
- 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
- N119SP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Crystal Airport (MIC), Minneapolis, MNTo Cloquet Carlton County Airport (COQ), MN
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- En route · cruise
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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
- Pilot in command › Fuel management, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was 10 miles from Cloquet Carlton County Airport when he noticed a low fuel pressure warning. The pilot stated that he knew of a field that he could land in, five miles from his current position, and decided to maneuver the helicopter to that location. The pilot reported that while over the predetermined field, at approximately 300 feet above ground level, the engine lost total power and he began an autorotation towards the field. The pilot stated that he performed a run-on landing, in order to avoid two posts, and came to rest in an upright attitude. The pilot reported that he did not see the reflecting posts until the aircraft was near the ground because of the low light condition. The pilot reported that he had 35-gallons of fuel when he departed Crystal Airport at 1905. The pilot stated that the flight time, from Crystal Airport to Cloquet Carlton County Airport, was typically 1.2 hours to 1.5 hours. According to the Chief Pilot of the Minneapolis State Police, the fuel burn for the accident helicopter was 25 gallons/hour. In a telephone conversation with the investigator-in-charge, the pilot indicated that he ran out of fuel during the accident flight.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate fuel management which led to fuel exhaustion and subsequent loss of engine power. Related factors were the pole and dusk light conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI99LA130
- Event ID
- 20001205X00439
- Case number
- CHI99LA130
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1999-04-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e8fc56459335e1e5a34a1d80b3fc2275ea00428fd8c3767fd1ab12318460de6b; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:30:03.446Z.