FTW03LA013 · Schweizer 269C-1
Schweizer 269C-1 · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Stinson Municipal Airport (SSF) to Stinson Municipal Airport (SSF)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW03LA013
- 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
Schweizer 269C-1
- Aircraft type
- Schweizer 269
- 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
- N61463
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stinson Municipal Airport (SSF), San Antonio, TXTo Stinson Municipal Airport (SSF), San Antonio, TX
- 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(cfi) › Refueling, not performed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was to provide night VFR cross-country navigation instruction to the student. The certified flight instructor (CFI) and student discussed the low fuel status while over flying one of the en route airports; however, elected to not refuel because neither pilot had a credit card. Subsequently, the helicopter's amber colored low fuel warning light illuminated, and a few minutes later the engine lost total power. An autorotation was performed, during which the helicopter impacted trees and landed hard. The CFI stated that a flight navigation log sheet was not used for the flight; however, during his preflight planning he estimated that the fuel burn rate was 10 gallons per hour at a cruise airspeed of 85 knots, and that the total fight time was going to be 90 minutes. According to an FAA inspector the normal plan cruise airspeed for this helicopter is 70 knots.
Probable cause
the flight instructor's failure to refuel at an available airport when a low fuel status was identified. Factors were the flight instructor's inadequate preflight flight planning, which included improper fuel consumption calculations, the night light conditions, and the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW03LA013
- Event ID
- 20021022X05357
- Case number
- FTW03LA013
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2002-10-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 664a38fc878da8baff86b538f57beb0f8dc171c07bcacaa6367e6308a1be48a5; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:04:15.666Z.