CEN15LA231 · Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From an unrecorded airport to Columbia, IL
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA231
- 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
- N165RV
- Operator
- Joshua Shiver
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Columbia, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2003)
- 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter experienced a loss of engine power during an agricultural application flight at low altitude. The commercial pilot lowered the collective and increased the throttle but was unable to reestablish engine power, so he made a run-on landing to a field. During landing, the right skid sunk into the mud/wheat, which caused a "slight hop," and the main rotor struck the tailboom.
Postaccident examination of the oil filter revealed no signs of contamination. No mechanical anomalies were noted with the fuel system and the fuel from the carburetor was light blue, typical of 100 low-lead aviation fuel. An unidentified sticky substance, likely agricultural spray, coated the lower half of the throttle flap and the bottom half of the fuel injector body. However, the observed buildup of the substance was not sufficient to restrict the throttle flap from actuating.
The refueling station used for the spraying operations consisted of a large storage tank attached to a trailer, a filtering unit, and a supply hose, which was connected to the refueling tank. The supply hose had been purchased from a farm supply store, and its exterior was stamped with "farm fuel transfer hose w/static wire." According to the manufacturer's packaging label, the supply hose was not designed to dispense aviation fuel. Samples of fuel were collected from inside the refueling tank and the supply hose; the sample from the hose was pale green, indicating that some type of contamination was present, and the sample from the tank was light blue. Laboratory analysis of the fuel samples from the refueling tank and supply hose showed that they were substantially identical; however both had a high "unwashed gum" content from different sources; the unwashed gum content in the hose sample was consistent with an additive used in plastics and rubber hoses; whereas, the unwashed gum content in the fuel tank was consistent with a stabilizing additive common in fuels. However, it could not be determined whether the unwashed gum content from the hose would have affected engine operation.
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power while maneuvering at low altitude for reasons that could not be determined during postaccident examination.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA231
- Event ID
- 20150514X13321
- Case number
- CEN15LA231
- 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: 5afc6995c5e6180543aa7581de832b605ef4236f51db30abfea5554346cf355d; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:18:36.291Z.