ENG11WA050 · Bell UH1H
Lakeland Helicopters Bell UH1H · Incident
From Wairau Valley to Raurimu
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location and registration. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG11WA050
- 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
- Incident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- 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
- Not recorded
Bell UH1H
- Aircraft type
- Bell UH1
- 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
- ZK HSP Narrative disagrees
- Operator
- Lakeland Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wairau ValleyTo Raurimu
- 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
- Non-U.S., Non-Commercial
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
While conducting a positioning flight between Blenheim (South Island NZ) to a lifting job in Raurimu (Central North Island NZ) at approximately 2000 feet altitude, the pilot of a Bell UH1H helicopter, registration number ZK-HSP, noticed the oil pressure fluctuating on the Honeywell T53 engine. He then turned the aircraft towards the beach and selected a suitable precautionary landing site near the Hokio Beach settlement. The pilot stated that before landing, he noticed the engine oil pressure indication drop to zero and a loss of engine power. The helicopter landed hard and rolled on its side.
The investigation is being conducted by the New Zealand Transport Accident Investigation Commission. As the state of manufacture of the airplane and engines, the NTSB has designated a U.S. Accredited Representative under the provisions of Annex 13 to the Convention on Civil Aviation to assist the New Zealand TAIC in their investigation.
Further information pertaining to this accident may be obtained from:
NEW ZEALAND The Chief Executive Officer Transport Accident Investigation Commission 11 Cigna House 40 Mercer Street P.O. Box 10-323 Wellington 6143 New Zealand
Tel.: (64) 4-473-0199 (24 hours) (64) 4-473-3112 E-mail: inquiries@taic.org.nz Fax: (64) 4-499-1510 AFTN: NZHOYAYX Cable: CIVAIR NZ Website: http://www.taic.org.nz
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG11WA050
- Event ID
- 20110922X50828
- Case number
- ENG11WA050
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the UTC date the NTSB stores; the local time zone is not recorded, so the local date may differ by a day.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 8184e9eb0bb8bbcfc16e45530233e66a1595a8ed01ece77c72d5cf468c4c5d8b; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:46:08.290Z.