NYC97LA119 · Enstrom F-280C
Enstrom F-280C · Accident: in flight collision with object on approach
From Lebanon Municipal Airport (LEB) to No airport
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC97LA119
- 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-280C
- Aircraft type
- Enstrom F-280
- 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
- N5700J
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lebanon Municipal Airport (LEB), Lebanon, NHTo No airport
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- 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
- Wire, transmission
- 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
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Sharon, VT, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and passenger departed on a local flight to land in a school yard to display the helicopter. After takeoff from the departure airport, the pilot over flew the school, then established a long final approach to the school yard. After crossing an interstate overpass, the pilot descended over a river. The helicopter struck wires that extended across the river, about 100 feet above the water, approximately 3/4 of a mile west of the intended school landing area. The helicopter came to rest in 2 feet of water. The pilot listed 429 hours of total flight experience, of which 193 were in helicopters, and 152 hours of helicopter pilot-in-command experience. The pilot did not provide experience in make and model, but listed 1.3 hours of helicopter experience during the previous 90 days.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to descend and fly at 100 feet over a river and his failure to maintain adequate obstacle clearance, which resulted in the in-flight collision with wires.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC97LA119
- Event ID
- 20001208X08224
- Case number
- NYC97LA119
- 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: 9b76fefb271fec891474a197224aa055f35339cce22e56a94620f30eeb7e79ce; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:25:18.364Z.