CHI97FA025 · Enstrom F28F
Enstrom F28F · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97FA025
- 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
- 3 · 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 F28F
- Aircraft type
- Enstrom F28
- 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
- N86214
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Eye witnesses observed the helicopter lift off on its left skid while moving forward a short distance. After stopping its forward motion the helicopter began moving backwards and slowly rolling into a steep left bank and gaining altitude. After the helicopter travelled about 75 feet and climbed to about 25 feet above the ground it moved to its left. As it passed over a farm truck, its rotor blades struck the roof. Shortly afterwards the helicopter rolled inverted and collided with the ground. Witnesses reported the wind at between 15 and 20 miles per hour, blowing on the helicopter's right rear side. The pilot's former instructor said he had not taught him to '...translate rearward.' He said he had told the pilot it was not safe to takeoff with a quartering tailwind.
Probable cause
the pilot's inadequate preflight preparation and not maintaining control of the helicopter during its rearward flight. A factor was the pilot's over-confidence in his personal ability.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97FA025
- Event ID
- 20001208X06998
- Case number
- CHI97FA025
- 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: dd7be100278aa3cd01e5dca4a9e58c460ef096b9fda98dd84e8adf93d60454e7; retrieved 2026-09-20T23:07:55.547Z.