CHI07CA215 · Rotorway 162F
Rotorway 162F · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From 20V · Beach, ND to Dickinson Theodore Roosevelt Regional Airport (DIK)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI07CA215
- 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
- CFYAR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 20V · Beach, NDTo Dickinson Theodore Roosevelt Regional Airport (DIK), Dickenson, ND
- 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 starvation
- 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 › Starvation
- Pilot in command › Flare, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Fuel system, inadvertent deactivation
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 was involved in a hard landing during an autorotation following a loss of engine power. The pilot reported that during the flight, while drinking from a water bottle, the bottle contacted the overhead electric fuel pump switch. The switch was knocked to the off position, resulting in the loss of engine power. The pilot stated that he entered an autorotation. He said he realized that he had contacted the switch, but by that time he was already committed to land. The pilot reported, "...the auto was poorly executed at the bottom end, resulting in a hard landing." He reported that during the landing, the rear landing gear collapsed and the main rotor blades struck the tailboom.
Probable cause
The pilot inadvertently shut off the fuel pump switch which resulted in fuel starvation and the subsequent loss of engine power. An additional cause was the pilot's poorly executed autorotation/flare which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI07CA215
- Event ID
- 20070831X01289
- Case number
- CHI07CA215
- 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: 0bd88d990cb3a6d6ffe4a9ecc3f546f0630bbef2079fb1d45291c61c240c56b3; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:38:52.927Z.