ANC97LA005 · Ken Seright ROTORWAY EXEC 162F ROTORWAY E
Ken Seright ROTORWAY EXEC 162F ROTORWAY E · Accident: partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Haines Airport (HNS) to Juneau International Airport (JNU)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC97LA005
- 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
Ken Seright ROTORWAY EXEC 162F ROTORWAY E
- Aircraft type
- Ken Seright ROTORWAY EXEC 162F
- 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
- N711KN
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Haines Airport (HNS), AKTo Juneau International Airport (JNU), Juneau, AK
- 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
- Partial loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Cooling system, lines › Leak
- Ignition system › Foreign material/substance
- Induction air control, air filter/screen › Soaked
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated private airplane pilot, the sole occupant & holder of a solo endorsement for helicopters, was beginning a cross-country flight in an experimental homebuilt helicopter. After takeoff, he heard a sharp bang & observed smoke in the cockpit. He declared an emergency, entered an autorotation, & selected an emergency landing area on a beach, but the area was covered with large boulders. During the flare & landing, the engine responded momentarily, when the pilot raised the collective pitch control, but the engine did not have sufficient power to hover. The helicopter sustained damage to the landing gear skids, the tail rotor, & the tail boom structure adjacent to the tail rotor assembly. An exam revealed the engine compartment was coated with engine coolant. The air intake filter was saturated with coolant, & 1 electronic ignition system was rendered inoperative from coolant saturation. A pressure test of the coolant system revealed a leak & spraying of coolant from a coolant pump manifold fitting. The pilot indicated the fitting had a rubber hose attached by a clamp, & coolant was leaking at the attach point. Also, he said the hose had been installed with excessive tension at the fitting due to it being 1/2 inch too short. He had accrued 47 hrs in helicopters.
Probable cause
a leaking coolant hose that saturated the induction air filter and one electronic ignition system with coolant. Unsuitable terrain for a forced landing was a related factor in the accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC97LA005
- Event ID
- 20001208X06829
- Case number
- ANC97LA005
- 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: 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: 0d9a15087b81246e0b85a4b6ae82c7a61c2661b05c1e1a993c63365e2df29c36; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:52:17.954Z.