CEN12CA435 · Bell 47G-3B-2
Custom Air Bell 47G-3B-2 · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Treynor, IA to Treynor, IA
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12CA435
- 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 47G-3B-2
- Aircraft type
- Bell 47
- 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
- N2919W
- Operator
- Custom Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Treynor, IATo Treynor, IA
- 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot performed a preflight inspection and noted that the 61-gallon fuel tank was just over a quarter full. After about 26 minutes of aerial application runs, the helicopter yawed left, and a warning light flickered. The pilot did not see which light had illuminated. Thinking it was a fuel problem, he checked the fuel quantity gauge, which read two needle-widths below a quarter tank. The pilot continued spraying, and several seconds later the turbine-engine stopped producing power. The pilot turned left and made an autorotation run-on landing to a field. After the helicopter came to a stop, the main rotor blades flexed downward and severed the tail boom. Approximately 1.75 gallons of fuel was drained from the two fuel tanks. The pilot reported that the usual fuel consumption was about 25 gallons per hour and the tanks had about 4 gallons of unusable fuel. The pilot said that there were no mechanical problems before the accident, and the engine was most likely starved of fuel due to the low fuel level and unusual attitudes inherent to helicopter aerial applications.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper fuel management, which resulted in a loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12CA435
- Event ID
- 20120712X20810
- Case number
- CEN12CA435
- 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: 5bbaab49c019cb9497b0e53b4f4810caa206fb532d562f1ff4dfa396d24c4d79; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:52:02.895Z.