ERA10LA484 · Bell OH-58A
B & S Air Bell OH-58A · Accident: fuel contamination during initial climb
From Covington, TN to Covington, TN
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA484
- 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
Bell OH-58A
- Aircraft type
- Bell OH-58
- 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
- N38FA
- Operator
- B & S Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Covington, TNTo Covington, TN
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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 contamination
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the initial climb on an aerial application flight, the helicopter's engine lost power while at 30 feet above ground level and in translational lift. The pilot stated that the engine began surging and the helicopter began losing altitude and impacted the ground. A postaccident examination of the helicopter's fuel system by the owner revealed particulate matter in the fuel nozzle. When the nozzle was examined by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) it had no carbon deposits, indicating that it had been cleaned prior to shipment. An examination of the fuel nozzle after a postaccident engine run revealed carbon deposits on the surface. The engine was then placed in an engine test cell and operated normally with no hesitation or abnormalities noted. The NTSB's materials laboratory determined the particulate matter to be torque stripe material. Although it could not be determined where the particulate matter came from, it is likely that it restricted the fuel supply to the engine and resulted in the loss of power.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to contamination of the helicopter's fuel supply.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA484
- Event ID
- 20100918X05923
- Case number
- ERA10LA484
- 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, 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: 0f33ffa686ef1f35ccfef7d33e347205ae556df8b3b3d989eabc629b644424f8; retrieved 2026-09-15T15:15:31.282Z.