LAX06CA033 · Rotorway 162F
Rotorway 162F · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Ak-Chin Regional Airport (A39) to Chandler Municipal Airport (CHD)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06CA033
- 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
- N321JN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ak-Chin Regional Airport (A39), Phoenix, AZTo Chandler Municipal Airport (CHD), Chandler, AZ
- 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)
- 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 › Contamination
- 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
The helicopter made a hard landing while executing an autorotation after a loss of engine power in-flight. The pilot fueled the helicopter with automotive fuel from cans in the morning prior to practicing in the traffic pattern for 1 hour at Phoenix Regional Airport. He landed, refueled from the same fuel source he had in the morning, and departed to Chandler. About 5 minutes into the flight, the pilot experienced a decrease in engine power and a drop in rotor rpm every time he raised the collective. He selected a landing site and chose to make an emergency landing. The pilot began an autorotation at about 1,000 feet above ground level and maneuvered toward his landing area, which was a water retention basin surrounded by trees. After just clearing the trees, and about 30 feet off the ground, he began a flare and touched down, stopping the helicopter within 20 feet. He exited the helicopter and noticed he had lost a tail rotor blade and the tail boom had a stress wrinkle in it. The pilot towed the helicopter back to his home and discovered rust and water in a fuel sample taken from the aircraft and the containers used to refuel the helicopter.
Probable cause
a loss of engine power due to fuel contamination (rust, water) as a result of the pilot's inadequate preflight planning preparation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06CA033
- Event ID
- 20051130X01921
- Case number
- LAX06CA033
- 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: ac3e8dca7091b2bc99d68c2e4423fafa090e0264e73944646c8305240ffbfa48; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:14:42.792Z.