WPR12LA328 · Hughes Helicopters Inc 369E
Wilson Construction Hughes Helicopters Inc 369E · Accident: fuel starvation while maneuvering
From Columbia Gorge Regional Airport (KDLS) to Columbia Gorge Regional Airport (KDLS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA328
- 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
Hughes Helicopters Inc 369E
- Aircraft type
- Hughes 369
- 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
- N427WC
- Operator
- Wilson Construction
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Columbia Gorge Regional Airport (KDLS), The Dalles, ORTo Columbia Gorge Regional Airport (KDLS), The Dalles, OR
- 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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 · hover
- 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 starvation
- 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 systems
- 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
The operator reported that the helicopter was in an 80-ft hover and had begun lifting and dragging the ends of winch lines used to pull power cables across sloping terrain when the engine lost power. The pilot jettisoned the external load as the helicopter began to descend rapidly. The helicopter's tail boom contacted the ground first and was then cut by the main rotor system, the skids separated from the fuselage, and the helicopter then came to rest on its right side. Several witnesses reported that the engine was still running on the ground after the impact.
Postaccident examination and operational testing of the engine revealed no anomalies that would have precluded normal operation. During previous investigations of similar accidents, it was determined that the fuel tank supply pickup can become unported with a fuel load of less than 151 lbs when pitch-and-roll attitudes approach 20 degrees; the operator reported that about 117 lbs of fuel was recovered from the helicopter. It is likely that the fuel tank supply pickup unported while the helicopter was maneuvering, which led to fuel starvation and the subsequent loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to fuel starvation, which resulted from the fuel tank supply pickup becoming unported while the helicopter was pulling power lines.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA328
- Event ID
- 20120727X33919
- Case number
- WPR12LA328
- 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: 6f5dd178d88197b68d6407c6b91ad9348ef25ab010c0934581811520c8f6ab65; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:06:25.071Z.