FTW97LA094 · Enstrom F-28C
Enstrom F-28C · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Texas Gulf Coast Regional Airport (LBX) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA094
- 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-28C
- 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
- N51774
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Texas Gulf Coast Regional Airport (LBX), TXTo 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Total 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Engine assembly, cylinder › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and his student were practicing takeoffs and landings and were 'on the second or third takeoff,' approximately 400 feet agl, when the helicopter 'began to lose power.' The instructor turned the helicopter back towards the airport and 'proceeded to descend while losing engine power.' Before the helicopter 'reached the ground, the engine lost all power.' After the touchdown on a taxiway, the instructor 'noticed flames from the engine compartment' and, after shutting down the engine, attempted unsuccessfully to put out the fire with a hand held fire extinguisher. The helicopter was destroyed by the fire. Examination of the engine by the operator revealed a 'hole melted out above [the] exhaust port' of the number 2 cylinder. According to the operator, the resulting exhaust gas leak 'severed the number 4 cylinder oil line and started a fire.'
Probable cause
The failure of the #2 cylinder for an undetermined reason which resulted in an exhaust leak that melted an oil line.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA094
- Event ID
- 20001208X07297
- Case number
- FTW97LA094
- 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 1997-01-30.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a1d0a551dece5099a6e57a10cf669b7119974862ad247351d8d47ed89d8d2f7d; retrieved 2026-09-22T20:24:51.955Z.