NTSB CAROL · Event
Event CEN25LA143
Registry · N6006K
FAA Aircraft Registry record.
Make / Model
HILLER UH-12E
TCDS
4H11 · SIAM HILLER HOLDINGS INC
Seats / Engines
4 seats · 1 engine
Last airworthiness date
19830324
ADS-B equipped
Yes — Mode-S A7CA73
Registrant of record
SUMMIT HELICOPTERS
Source: FAA Aircraft Registry (releasable master file).
Aircraft involved
Probable cause & findings
The pilot’s improper fuel planning and fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion and subsequent impact with terrain during an autorotation.
Factual narrative
The pilot departed on an aerial application flight in the helicopter to continue spraying a field with herbicide. The pilot stated that he became preoccupied with touching up areas, which took longer than expected. While flying across the field to begin the next spray pass, the engine experienced a total loss of power, and he immediately knew that it was due to fuel exhaustion. The pilot performed an autorotation and landed hard, which resulted in substantial damage to the main rotor blades and the tailboom. The pilot stated that after the landing, he checked the helicopter fuel tank, and it was empty. There were no mechanical malfunctions or failures of the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12
NTSB Findings
Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).
- — Aircraft-Fluids/misc hardware-Fluids-Fuel-Fluid level
- — Aircraft-Fluids/misc hardware-Fluids-Fuel-Fluid management
- — Personnel issues-Task performance-Planning/preparation-Fuel planning-Pilot
Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file
NTSB_2025_CEN25LA143.txt.
Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb.
Full investigation docket on
data.ntsb.gov ↗.
Beyond the agency record
Search this event elsewhere.
Pre-filled searches into the sources where news + community discussion of aviation events lives. External sources are reported, not agency. Treat them as signal that something happened, not as fact about what happened.
Entity-clustered aviation events in the press — last 24 hr + 30-day archive.
Official agency record + docket.
Investigative docket: factual reports, photos, transcripts.
Long-running aviation incident database (Flight Safety Foundation).
Community NTSB synthesis blog — often has photos and witness reports.
Gold-standard aviation incident blog.
Aviation industry news search.
GA pilot forum — informed but rumor-prone.
GA pilot subreddit search.
Tail-number page — flight history (free tier limited).
AOPA Air Safety Institute search.
Mainstream press coverage. Recent events only.
Privacy-preserving news search.
External links open in a new tab. We don't ingest their content; we deep-link search queries.
Related research
What the literature says.
Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (fuel exhaustion). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.
- AOPA Air Safety Institute 2023 · Safety advisor
Safety Advisor: Fuel Awareness
AOPA Air Safety Institute safety advisor on preventing fuel-exhaustion and fuel-starvation accidents in general aviation. Covers pre-flight fuel planning, reserve requirements (14 CFR 91.151, 91.167),…
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Abstract
U.S. Civil Rotorcraft Accidents, 1963 through 1997
The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has recorded 8,436 rotorcraft accidents during the period mid - 1963 through the end of 1997.
- NASA NTRS 2019 · Contractor Report (CR)
A study of carburetor/induction system icing in general aviation accidents
An assessment of the frequency and severity of carburetor/induction icing in general-aviation accidents was performed. The available literature and accident data from the National Transportation Safet…
- NASA NTRS 2018 · Other
Parachuting to Safety
NASA's Langley Research Center awarded Ballistic Recovery Systems, Inc., three Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contracts to research and develop a new, low cost, lightweight recovery system …
Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗