WPR09LA161 · Brown BARNETT J4B
Brown BARNETT J4B · Accident: fuel related en route
From Yuba County Airport (MYV) to Lincoln Regional Karl Harder Field (LHM)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09LA161
- 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
Brown BARNETT J4B
- Aircraft type
- Brown BARNETT J4B
- 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
- N35JB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Yuba County Airport (MYV), Marysville, CATo Lincoln Regional Karl Harder Field (LHM), Lincoln, CA
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- Fuel related
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While in cruise flight, the gyroplane experienced a loss of engine power and the pilot initiated a forced landing onto a highway. After an uneventful landing, the pilot steered the gyroplane off the road to avoid a vehicle, and the gyroplane encountered a ditch and rolled onto its right side. The vertical stabilizer and rudder were bent and wrinkled, and the rotor head was destroyed. Postaccident examination of the engine by the gyroplane's owner revealed no evidence of mechanical failures or malfunctions. The owner stated that the high humidity and the pilot's description of the power loss indicated carburetor icing had occurred. The owner further stated that the gyroplane was equipped with carburetor heat; however, the pilot did not use it. Review of the carburetor ice probability chart revealed that the temperature and dew point at the time of the accident were conducive to icing conditions at cruise power and serious icing conditions at glide power.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to carburetor icing as a result of the pilot's failure to use carburetor heat.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09LA161
- Event ID
- 20090323X85513
- Case number
- WPR09LA161
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 45cd795462495cdea15ac78bbf34a64e2d27dcb88571e8d353c88bed0cb21066; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:51:57.124Z.