ANC04LA027 · Hiller UH-12B
Hiller UH-12B · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Orlando Executive Airport (KORL) to Dove Heliport (FA22)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC04LA027
- 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
Hiller UH-12B
- 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
- N5304V
- Operator
- Danny Bals
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Orlando Executive Airport (KORL), Orlando, FLTo Dove Heliport (FA22), Sarasota, FL
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
- Pilot in command › 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 airline transport pilot was on a solo cross-country helicopter flight as part of a helicopter add-on rating. He reported that he thought that there was enough fuel for about 1.7 hours of flight time, but after only 1.5 hours of flight time, as the flight neared the destination heliport, the engine began to run rough and lose power. He said that he lowered the helicopter's collective and entered an autorotation, and selected an unoccupied playground as an emergency landing site. As the helicopter descended into the playground area, he had to raise the collective to avoid a stand of trees, and the main rotor speed decayed. The helicopter's skids subsequently struck the ground hard, and the helicopter rolled onto its right side. The helicopter sustained structural damage to the fuselage, tail boom, and main rotor drive system. The pilot noted that there were no preaccident mechanical anomalies with the helicopter. An FAA inspector who inspected the helicopter and spoke with the pilot, noted that the helicopter's fuel tank appeared empty, and stated that that the pilot agreed with him.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning/decision which resulted in fuel exhaustion. Also causal was the pilot's failure to maintain adequate rotor speed, resulting in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC04LA027
- Event ID
- 20040315X00322
- Case number
- ANC04LA027
- 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: fbaef74ea879d84ab796428c298156a659bbf8eeb0dfad8e52f51fa85a39b26c; retrieved 2026-09-22T07:55:24.716Z.