ANC12CA082 · Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
Pollux Aviation Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II · Accident: wrong fuel before flight
From Wainwright Airport (PAWI) to Wainwright, AK
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC12CA082
- 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
Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
- Aircraft type
- Robinson R44
- 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
- N74496
- Operator
- Pollux Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wainwright Airport (PAWI), Wainwright, AKTo Wainwright, AK
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- Wrong fuel
- 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
After landing at the airport, the pilot asked ground personnel to fuel the helicopter while he prepared a sling load for his next flight. The pilot said that while he was weighing the sling load cargo on a nearby scale, the ground crew finished fueling the helicopter. The pilot then signed the fuel delivery manifest for the 25.4 gallons of aviation fuel. Shortly thereafter, the pilot boarded the helicopter and started the engine. He said that after liftoff, he picked up the 775-pound sling load and then departed toward his destination. About 10 to 15 seconds after takeoff, the engine began to run rough and lose power, so the pilot elected to land, but while attempting to set the sling load on the ground, all engine power was lost. The low rotor warning horn sounded, the pilot entered a low-altitude emergency autorotation and attempted to cushion the landing, but the helicopter landed hard. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and tail rotor drive system.
A postaccident examination revealed that the reciprocating engine helicopter had been inadvertently serviced with Jet A turbine fuel. In a written statement, the ground personnel who fueled the helicopter stated that they thought they were fueling the helicopter with aviation gas, but they were using the same trailer that they used to fuel larger (turbine-powered) helicopters.
Probable cause
The failure of ground personnel to ensure the helicopter was serviced with the proper fuel. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's failure to monitor the fueling process.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC12CA082
- Event ID
- 20120802X50608
- Case number
- ANC12CA082
- 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: 995efbb86ba2e1c4bd9863996ec0462c5713ef7add4e76fcbf3cb5977c36309f; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:11:20.637Z.