NYC03LA031 · Bell 206B
Glenwood Aviation Bell 206B · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From Fort Meade Executive Airport (FME) to Fort Meade Executive Airport (FME)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC03LA031
- 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
- 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
- N651GA
- Operator
- Glenwood Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Meade Executive Airport (FME), Odenton, MDTo Fort Meade Executive Airport (FME)
- 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 · VFR pattern final
- 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 › Flare, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Fuel supply, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed on an aerial photography mission in a Bell 206B helicopter with what he thought was sufficient fuel for 1.6 hours of flight at 28 gph. Returning to the airport to refuel, he experienced a power loss. A witness reported the helicopter appeared to drop in from about 20 feet. The helicopter struck the ground hard and bounced. The main rotor struck the tail boom aft of the horizontal stabilizer and it separated from the helicopter. The pilot reported that he had been airborne for 1.3 hours. The FAA inspector reported that the fuel tank was empty. Further inspection of the fuel quantity measuring system revealed that it was smooth with no hesitation felt in the sensing arm, or observed on the fuel quantity gauge. With the fuel sensing up in the full up position, the fuel quantity gauge indicated about 2 gallons less than full. With the fuel quantity arm in the lowered position, and no fuel in the tank, the fuel quantity gauge read zero or empty.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to monitor his fuel supply which resulted in a power loss due to fuel exhaustion, and the pilot's misjudged flare, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC03LA031
- Event ID
- 20021223X05626
- Case number
- NYC03LA031
- 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: 579f1de12ed1d204f0cf411f76ada4a54e62b074152eb514bccfc3e07e359354; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:48:07.924Z.