WPR24LA030 · Arrow Falcon Exporters UH-1H
West Valley Aviation Arrow Falcon Exporters UH-1H · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) before flight
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR24LA030
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Arrow Falcon Exporters UH-1H
- Aircraft type
- Arrow Falcon Exporters 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
- N3053Q
- Operator
- West Valley Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 57 years (built 1966)
- 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
- Prior to flight
- 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
- Fire/smoke (non-impact)
- 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 caught fire shortly after the first start of the day; the pilot shut down the helicopter, exited, and called 911. The fire originated on the left side of the helicopter where the fuel shutoff valve is located, on the airframe side of the firewall. The helicopter sustained extensive thermal damage in the cargo area. The fuel shutoff valve and associated fuel lines were destroyed. Maintenance personnel stated that they thought one of the inlet fuel lines had come loose and sprayed fuel, which ignited and started the fire; however, no such evidence to support or disprove this theory survived the fire.
The last annual inspection was signed off about three and a half months before the accident. Maintenance personnel checked the fuel lines on the airframe side to the fuel shutoff valve with no issues noted in the maintenance log.
Probable cause
An on-ground fuel fire for reasons that could not be determined due to extensive thermal damage.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR24LA030
- Event ID
- 20231109193363
- Case number
- WPR24LA030
- 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: 6f79f7c339935af033251aa1a6a0353c41fb43c4ab1a5ce440205683b200514a; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:17:00.104Z.