CEN14LA390 · Bell 206B B
Samaritan Air Bell 206B B · Accident: fuel contamination while maneuvering
From Bennet, NE to Bennet, NE
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA390
- 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 206B B
- Aircraft type
- Bell 206
- 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
- N240SJ
- Operator
- Samaritan Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Bennet, NETo Bennet, NE
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1978)
- 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 contamination
- 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 reported that he refueled the helicopter from a stationary fuel tank that the operator had recently had filled. After sumping the helicopter's fuel tank and the airframe fuel filter and noting that the strained fuel was absent of debris and water, the pilot departed on the flight. About 12 to 15 minutes into the flight, the engine lost total power. The pilot made a low-altitude autorotation to a field, and the helicopter subsequently slid about 10 to 15 ft and struck a berm. No preaccident mechanical deficiencies were found that would have precluded normal operation of the engine.
The pilot said that he thought the power loss was due to fuel contamination, so he sumped fuel from the helicopter and the storage tank, and the fuel from each source was dark brown with visible contaminants. Postaccident examination of a large sample of fuel drained from the storage fuel tank confirmed that the fuel was brown with visible contaminants. The tank's filter was also found to be contaminated, and sludge was observed in the bottom of the tank. Contaminated fuel was found in the helicopter's fuel tank and fuel filter bowl, and the fuel nozzle was covered with a hardened dark brown substance.
Review of fueling records revealed that the fuel contractor had delivered a 1,000-gallon fuel storage tank labeled "diesel" to the fueling site and that the contractor placed 920 gallons of Jet A fuel in the tank 14 days later (5 days before the accident). It could not be determined what type of fuel was in the tank before it was filled with Jet A fuel.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to fuel contamination, which resulted from the pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection. Contributing to the accident was the operator’s failure to properly maintain the fuel storage tank.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA390
- Event ID
- 20140728X11738
- Case number
- CEN14LA390
- 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: a1aa73f1c0dfb4123a4339baa71507d60857b9ece2f9ef40bd68ea390ad71620; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:00:27.785Z.