CEN12LA667 · McDonnell Douglas Heli Co 369FF
Rogers Helicopters McDonnell Douglas Heli Co 369FF · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Fort Dodge Regional Airport (FOD) to Decorah Municipal Airport (DEH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA667
- 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
McDonnell Douglas Heli Co 369FF
- Aircraft type
- McDonnell Douglas 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
- N530KD
- Operator
- Rogers Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Dodge Regional Airport (FOD), Fort Dodge, IATo Decorah Municipal Airport (DEH), Decorah, 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 91: General Aviation
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and his passenger were repositioning the helicopter and stopped twice to refuel. Each time they stopped the pilot topped off the fuel tank. During the second stop, the pilot used the airplane for personal reasons and flew for just over an hour. Before continuing on with the repositioning flight, the pilot added 15 gallons of fuel. Since this was not enough fuel to top off the tank, he referenced the fuel guage, which indicated 305-310 pounds of fuel on board. The pilot and passenger then departed on the next leg of their flight. About 58 minutes after they departed, the fuel-low caution light illuminated, indicating there was 35 pounds of fuel remaining. The pilot continued with the flight since he was within a few miles of the destination airport. About three minutes after the fuel-low caution light illuminated, the engine quit. The pilot made an autorotation to a mature corn field. The helicopter bounced upon touch down and rolled over on to its left side, which damaged the tail boom. Examination of the helicopter revealed only two drops of fuel were drained from the fuel sump and a 1/4-cup of fuel was drained from the fuel tank. Further examination revealed no mechancal deficiencies with the fuel system; however, when the fuel gauge and low-fuel caution light were tested they were found to not be calibrated correctly. The fuel gauge indicated a higher fuel total then what was actually in the fuel tank and the fuel-low caution light came on when there was only 19 pounds of fuel in the fuel tank versus 35 pounds. According to the operator, the low fuel-low caution light was inspected several months before the accident as part of a normal maintenance inspection. From the time this inspection was completed to the time of the accident, no other maintenance was performed on the fuel quantity sensor system.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to properly manage the helicopter's available fuel supply, which led to a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Contributing to the accident was the improper calibration of the fuel gauge and the fuel-low warning light.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA667
- Event ID
- 20121002X25035
- Case number
- CEN12LA667
- 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: e521418e5e3b31708ac0fabda9eac01831aa9e98fc43e9317cd6c265fcfdcfd3; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:04:30.340Z.