CEN13LA155 · Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
Crumpton Aviation Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II · Accident: aircraft servicing event before flight
From Tulsa International Airport (KTUL) to Tulsa Riverside Airport (KRVS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA155
- 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
- N276RC
- Operator
- Crumpton Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tulsa International Airport (KTUL), Tulsa, OKTo Tulsa Riverside Airport (KRVS), Tulsa, OK
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft servicing event
- 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 propeller/rotor
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After fuel servicing, the line technician did not remove the rubber fueling mat from the fuselage. The pilot did not observe the mat on the fuselage before taking off, most likely due to his inadequate preflight inspection of the helicopter. While climbing through 150 feet above ground level, the fueling mat departed the fuselage and impacted the tail rotor, which resulted in the fracture of both tail rotor blades and a loss of tail rotor control. The pilot executed an autorotation landing and landed without further incident.
Probable cause
The line technician’s failure to remove the refueling mat from the helicopter fuselage following servicing, which resulted in the mat striking the tail rotor in flight, and the pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA155
- Event ID
- 20130211X13953
- Case number
- CEN13LA155
- 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: 23759218010de5ee3ac23177f55e3482bc54379ddbe7eb7c2839c57c282b3913; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:54:33.837Z.