CHI96FA099 · McDonnell Douglas 369E
McDonnell Douglas 369E · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) while maneuvering
From Manhattan Regional Airport (MHK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI96FA099
- 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
McDonnell Douglas 369E
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas 369
- 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
- N7065C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Manhattan Regional Airport (MHK)To not recorded
- 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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
- Maneuvering · hover out of ground effect
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Before starting a flight to replace power line poles, the helicopter was serviced with 350 pounds of fuel. Normally, six poles were replaced on each flight. As work was being performed on the sixth pole, the helicopter engine lost total power after about 1.6 hours of flight time. The helicopter was damaged during a forced landing. A total of 20 ounces of fuel was drained from the main tank; unusable fuel reserve in that tank was considered to be 2.5 gallons. No mechanical failure/malfunction of the airframe, powerplant, fuel system, or flight controls was discovered during the investigation. Due to unforeseen delays, the company was behind schedule concerning their powerline installation contract.
Probable cause
Improper planning/decision by the pilot, which resulted in fuel exhaustion due to an inadequate supply of fuel. A factor relating to the accident was: pressure to meet a work schedule.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI96FA099
- Event ID
- 20001208X05367
- Case number
- CHI96FA099
- 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: 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: 90318b2b9ad28d1bfeb3eae635f7b6a8696750030b84a4725319f9eb4ff42dc9; retrieved 2026-09-21T12:52:05.014Z.