WPR15LA159 · Garlick UH-1B
R & R Conner Aviation Garlick UH-1B · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Kettle Falls, WA to Kettle Falls, WA
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA159
- 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
Garlick UH-1B
- Aircraft type
- Garlick UH-1
- 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
- N46969
- Operator
- R & R Conner Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kettle Falls, WATo Kettle Falls, WA
- 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
- 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)
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 power plant
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting an external load logging flight in the helicopter. A review of maintenance records revealed that, on the day of the accident, the engine had been replaced with an overhauled engine. Following the maintenance, the pilot completed one logging cycle without incident. The pilot reported that, about 50 minutes into the second cycle, she heard a loud screeching/grinding noise followed by a muffled "bang." The low rotor rpm horn sounded, and she initiated an autorotation. The helicopter touched down, impacted trees, rolled down sloped terrain, and then came to rest.
A postaccident examination of the engine's particle separator assembly revealed that it was intact and installed properly on the air inlet section; however, the inlet guide vanes exhibited signatures consistent with foreign object damage, and a material consistent with a towel was found within the vanes. Given the damage signatures and the found material, it is likely that maintenance personnel did not adequately inspect the engine area after installing the overhauled engine and left a towel in its compressor section, which the engine subsequently ingested and resulted in a total loss of power.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to foreign object (towel) ingestion. Contributing to the accident was maintenance personnel’s inadequate postmaintenance inspection of the engine.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA159
- Event ID
- 20150511X95737
- Case number
- WPR15LA159
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2015-05-08.
- API snapshot SHA-256: fde87f5d3afe7c5ab20c121c497270d9a139f0fd31ec1e1335724f7f521f4f82; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:18:07.537Z.