WPR09CA462 · Agusta A109 K2
Omniflight Helicopters Agusta A109 K2 · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Mesa Gateway Airport (KIWA) to Page Municipal Airport (KPGA)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09CA462
- 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
Agusta A109 K2
- Aircraft type
- Agusta A109
- 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
- N129AL
- Operator
- Omniflight Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mesa Gateway Airport (KIWA), Mesa, AZTo Page Municipal Airport (KPGA), Page, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that at 70 miles from his destination he determined that he would be landing closer to minimum fuel than he had planned. He continued to the destination and passed over one airport because it did not have any services. At 35 miles from the destination, the low fuel caution-warning for fuel tank 2 illuminated, followed by a low fuel caution-warning for fuel tank 1. The pilot thought that he would still land with some reserve and continued to fly to his destination airport. Approximately 1 mile from the destination airport the helicopter experienced a dual engine flame-out. The pilot autorotated to a sports field where the helicopter landed hard, sustaining damage to the main rotor blades, tail rotor, tail boom, and horizontal stabilizer. The pilot stated that the helicopter and engines had no mechanical failures or malfunctions during the flight.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's inadequate in-flight planning and his decision to continue flight with a known low fuel level state.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09CA462
- Event ID
- 20090922X35033
- Case number
- WPR09CA462
- 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: 56b716815e2fb6a668861f2481d135230adb16913d199f504589759231730ad2; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:20:14.725Z.