CEN22LA305 · Bell 206B
MF Helicopters Bell 206B · Accident: fuel exhaustion on approach
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN22LA305
- 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
- 0
- 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
- 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
- N882NY
- Operator
- MF Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 50 years (built 1972)
- 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
- Approach
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While approaching to land on a support truck, the helicopter experienced a loss of engine power. The pilot attempted to autorotate to land and the helicopter experienced a hard landing. The right skid broke, and the main rotor blades struck the ground and the tail boom. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and tail boom. The pilot attributed the loss of engine power due to a possible fuel pump failure. During a telephone interview the pilot said that he took off from the airport ramp to refuel and the fuel gauge indicated about 15 to 20 gallons. He climbed the helicopter to about 40 ft, flew about 150 yards, and landed on a support truck where the helicopter idled for about 15 minutes while ground personnel attempted to get the truck fuel pump to work. One of the ground personnel waved the pilot off to another support truck. The helicopter climbed to about 40 ft and moved about 35 - 50 yards to a second support truck. As the helicopter approached to land, the tachometer dropped then spiked, and then the engine lost power. The pilot nosed the helicopter over to avoid the truck and the helicopter hit the ground. When asked the pilot answered, "I guess I ran out of fuel". A postaccident examination of the helicopter revealed that the fuel tanks were dry and the fuel gauge indicated 0 gallons of fuel.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper fuel management that resulted in fuel exhaustion and a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN22LA305
- Event ID
- 20220706105427
- Case number
- CEN22LA305
- 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, cause areas. 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: d41d41acec0a169cc4a292a7cab88d5e240e1b231af27c50dd94c2ea161f0f95; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:25:30.618Z.