GAA17CA135 · Hughes OH 6A
Hughes OH 6A · Accident: ground handling event while standing
From Carbon County Regional Airport / Buck Davis Field (PUC) to East Carbon, UT
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA17CA135
- 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
- Government
- 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
Hughes OH 6A
- Aircraft type
- Hughes OH-6
- 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
- N6640Z
- Operator
- Usda Aphis WS Atoc
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Carbon County Regional Airport / Buck Davis Field (PUC), Price, UTTo East Carbon, UT
- Aircraft age
- About 47 years (built 1970)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Standing · engine(s) operating
- 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
- Ground handling 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter pilot reported that, after landing to refuel, he reduced power to flight idle and initiated a 2-minute cooldown before shutting off the engine. One minute into the cooldown, the fuel truck approached the helicopter from the rear and struck the main rotor blades.
The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the main rotor blades.
Probable cause
The fuel truck driver’s failure to stop before impacting the helicopter’s main rotor blades.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA17CA135
- Event ID
- 20170209X42609
- Case number
- GAA17CA135
- 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: e24fd34eaad5215102b84bed03296ea427c9c1ce67143cb1b3acaf8c85dca43e; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:00:24.562Z.