BFO94LA129 · Enstrom F-28A
Enstrom F-28A · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport (BHB) to Houlton International Airport (HUL)
Event
- NTSB case
- BFO94LA129
- 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
Enstrom F-28A
- Aircraft type
- Enstrom F-28
- 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
- N292Q
- Operator
- Merril Kearney
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport (BHB), Bar Harbor, METo Houlton International Airport (HUL), Houlton, ME
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Loss of control in flight
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Bangor, ME, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter collided with terrain during cruise flight at night over wooded terrain in conditions which the pilot described as 'no ground light or cellestial lights.' According to the pilot, he noticed a fast 'moving light coming from my left to right at what appeared to be my altitude.' He did an evasive manuever to avoid a collision, but in doing so he lost control of the helicopter which collided with underlying trees. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions.
Probable cause
The pilot's loss of aircraft control. Factors are dark night conditions, and the pilot's execution of an evasive maneuver.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record BFO94LA129
- Event ID
- 20001206X01956
- Case number
- BFO94LA129
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1994-08-10.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2f9a06b62ab4270efa41b77b4002b7015c53c981375b13caf28c786339f39460; retrieved 2026-09-21T22:32:07.538Z.