ERA17LA285 · Bell 47G 2A
Bell 47G 2A · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From St Marys Municipal Airport (OYM) to St Marys Municipal Airport (OYM)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17LA285
- 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 47G 2A
- Aircraft type
- Bell 47
- 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
- N9526
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St Marys Municipal Airport (OYM), St Marys, PATo St Marys Municipal Airport (OYM), St Marys, PA
- Aircraft age
- About 63 years (built 1954)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 exhaustion
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot stated that he departed in the helicopter with 37 to 42 gallons of fuel on board; however, he had only used an average fuel burn for his endurance estimates and did not make adjustments for pressure, temperature, or other performance metrics. He indicated that, about 2 hours into the flight, the helicopter "ran out of fuel." He performed an autorotation to a grassy lot and the helicopter landed hard, which resulted in structural damage. Examination of the wreckage revealed that the fuel system was intact, that both fuel tanks were undamaged, and that each tank contained about 1 gallon or less of fuel, which was consistent with the unusable fuel quantity for each tank. The student pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation of the helicopter. Thus, because the student did not account for the pressure, temperature, and other performance metrics for his preflight calculations or in-flight fuel monitoring, he did not have sufficient fuel on board to complete the flight.
Probable cause
The student pilot's inadequate prefight planning and en route fuel management, which resulted in fuel exhaustion and a total loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17LA285
- Event ID
- 20170820X53819
- Case number
- ERA17LA285
- 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: 554e77b0a93ddf9c16b0a7335d3b12438786c9dd36c1aae8292b6591fa8b880f; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:43:19.270Z.