SEA96LA100 · Hiller UH-12
Hiller UH-12 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From WA to Walla Walla Regional Airport (ALW)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96LA100
- 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
Hiller UH-12
- Aircraft type
- Hiller UH-12
- 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
- N174HA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From WATo Walla Walla Regional Airport (ALW), WA
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he exhausted his fuel supply while attempting to land at the destination airport for refueling. He had previously attempted to refuel at a remote landing zone equipped with a fuel truck, but the fuel truck was unable to pump fuel at that time. The pilot and the owner of the operation boarded the helicopter and decided to fly to the airport with what they thought was about 14 gallons of fuel on board. The pilot intended on landing the helicopter (en route), if the fuel gauge reached the 'yellow' range during the flight. About 2.5 nautical miles from the airport, when the fuel gauge needle was slightly outside of the yellow range, the engine 'quit.' The pilot executed an immediate autorotation. One of the helicopter's skids impacted soft terrain during the landing and a main rotor blade struck the ground. The helicopter rolled over and was substantially damaged.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate preflight/planning, and his failure to refuel the helicopter with sufficient fuel before flight, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and a subsequent forced landing. A factor relating to the accident was: an inaccurate fuel quantity gauge, which displayed a false indication of fuel.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96LA100
- Event ID
- 20001208X05879
- Case number
- SEA96LA100
- 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 1996-05-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ce18178515f30bad192c3a5eb97d822f51356d492a9a23c0fbcacec374266856; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:26:16.435Z.