ATL03LA072 · Rotorway 162F
Rotorway 162F · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL03LA072
- 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
Rotorway 162F
- Aircraft type
- Rotorway 162
- 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
- N92AL
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Piedmont Triad International Airport (GSO), Greensboro, NCTo 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 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he flew around the airstrip for approximately 45 minutes. After several passes over the airstrip, the pilot reported he received an electronic control unit (ECU) failure indication light. When the engine lost power, the pilot entered an autorotation. During the touchdown phase of the autorotation, the helicopter rolled over on the left side. During the examination of the helicopter no fuel was found in the fuel tanks or at the accident site. The ECU's were sent to be bench tested. The test revealed, the last 30 seconds of the flight indicated an increase in the throttle position with a corresponding decrease of engine RPM, with a rapid cycling during the final 12 seconds prior to the engine completely shutting down. The data retrieved from the ECUs revealed the flight prior to the accident lasted 10 minutes with a three-minute ground run. The accident flight was approximately 57 minutes. The pilot stated that the helicopter fuel tank capacity is 14 gallons, and can fly for 2 hours or 180 miles with full fuel. According to the pilot, the helicopter departed with 14 gallons of automotive fuel.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate preflight planning of fuel required for flight which resulted in fuel exhaustion, and a complete loss of engine power followed by a forced landing, and a dynamic rollover during the autorotative touchdown.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL03LA072
- Event ID
- 20030411X00486
- Case number
- ATL03LA072
- 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, coordinates. 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: 613a330ca69d7126a3ce4978812602ae9c796430e450283aa216eff1fa62c8f4; retrieved 2026-09-22T09:28:19.110Z.