DEN02LA046 · Bell 206B-III
Bell 206B-III · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Harely B Ranch, UT to Moab, UT
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN02LA046
- 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
- Unknown
- 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-III
- 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
- N191RH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harely B Ranch, UTTo Moab, UT
- 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
- Approach
- 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)
- 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 › Rotor RPM, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he started the day with approximately 50 gallons of fuel on board. He departed from his home base, for a 10 minute flight to pick up several passengers, taking groups of them on 5 to 10 minute photo flights, for a total mission duration of approximately 80 to 90 minutes. After dropping off the last group, he returned to his home base. According to the fuel gauge, there was approximately 12 to 13 gallons of fuel remaining when he departed for the 10 minute repositioning flight back to his home base. Based on a fuel burn rate of approximately 25 gallons per hour, he calculated that he had 30 minutes of fuel remaining. He also stated that, due to noise abatement, he always approached his helipad at a "high airspeed and with a fast rate of descent and then about 100 feet, power up to make a high power, steep landing." Being "low on fuel," he did the same thing on this approach, starting his descent at approximately 80 to 100 knots. At 50 to 75 feet above ground level (agl), he initiated a 10 to 20 degree flare and began the descent to land. The fuel boost pump light illuminated, the "auto-relight" light came on, and the "engine out" light illuminated. His first thought was that he "ran the aircraft out of fuel." He realized that he was going too fast to land at his helipad. He adjusted his approach, and attempted to land in a parking lot just beyond his pad. He applied forward cyclic control, to level out the helicopter, hoping the boost pump light would go out and that the "auto relight" would reignite the fuel if it started pumping. The helicopter struck the ground hard with its right landing gear skid, bounced, slid forward approximately 15 feet, turned to its left approximately 90 degrees and slowly rolled over on its right side. The aircraft continued to turn to the left another 90 degrees and came to rest on its right side, facing 180 degrees from the direction of the approach. During the hard landing, the main rotor blades struck the tail boom, separating the vertical stabilizer, tail rotor and tail rotor gearbox. The main rotor hub and blade assembly was intact and remained attached to the main rotor mast.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain rotor rpm during a forced landing. A contributing factor was fuel starvation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN02LA046
- Event ID
- 20020530X00776
- Case number
- DEN02LA046
- 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 2002-05-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 327e54d24b8b9e939119ab34a7686baa9a1837e2559a1e2774159be2034bb47e; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:54:43.481Z.