IAD97LA121 · Pohlman/Pohlman ROTORWAY EXEC 90 ROTORWAY E
Pohlman/Pohlman ROTORWAY EXEC 90 ROTORWAY E · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From W54 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD97LA121
- 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
Pohlman/Pohlman ROTORWAY EXEC 90 ROTORWAY E
- Aircraft type
- Pohlman/pohlman ROTORWAY EXEC 90
- 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
- N94CJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From W54To 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
- Approach · VFR pattern final
- 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 (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Weather condition › Carburetor icing conditions
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot remained in the traffic pattern for 40 minutes in his homebuilt helicopter, performing takeoffs and landings. At 200 feet on final approach with 19 inches of manifold pressure set, the engine stopped running. During the forced landing, the pilot maneuvered to avoid an embankment and impacted the ground damaging the tail boom and rotor blades. Examination of the engine revealed no mechanical malfunctions. The temperature/dew point was: 57 degrees Fahrenheit and 38 degrees Fahrenheit, respectively. Utilizing the 'Icing Probability Curves' charts, these temperatures combined with a glide power setting, placed the carburetor within the serious icing range. Examination of the helicopter revealed that the carburetor heat was preset prior to the flight and not accessible from inside the cockpit. After the accident, the FAA recommended to the manufacturer that a switch be placed in the cockpit. The manufacturer completed a modification allowing control of the carburetor heat from inside the cabin.
Probable cause
The loss of power due to carburetor icing. A factor to this accident was the carburetor heat was not accessible from within the cockpit.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD97LA121
- Event ID
- 20001208X08871
- Case number
- IAD97LA121
- 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: 0ceacdb59435ff6874262200326df057eed023156261643e2d06f49e902d4967; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:09:02.684Z.