NYC98LA049 · Bihn MINI 500
Bihn MINI 500 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Dayton-Phillipsburg Airport (3I7) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA049
- 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
- 1 · 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
Bihn MINI 500
- Aircraft type
- Bihn MINI 500
- 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
- N727EB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dayton-Phillipsburg Airport (3I7), Phillipsburg, OHTo 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
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
- Rotor system, main rotor blade › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The homebuilt Mini 500 helicopter was in level flight about 900 to 1200 feet, when the engine sounds stopped. The helicopter's nose dropped, and one main rotor blade struck the tailboom and separated from the rotor head. The helicopter descended and struck the ground 90 degrees nose down. Examination of the non-certificated 2 cycle Rotax engine did not reveal a reason for the power loss. The engine manufacturer published the maximum continuous RPM as 6,500. Other builders reported that when the helicopter's rotor RPM was operated at the top of the green arc, the engine operated about 6,700 RPM. The NTSB database revealed 23 Mini-500 accidents in 1997 and 1998. Twelve of those involved a loss of engine power. The Rotax operator's manual stated, '...This engine by design is subject to sudden stoppage...Never fly the aircraft equipped with this engine at locations, airspeeds, altitudes...from which a successful no-power landing cannot be made...'
Probable cause
A loss of engine power for undetermined reasons, followed by the main rotor striking the tailboom, which resulted in the separation of a main rotor blade.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA049
- Event ID
- 20001208X09367
- Case number
- NYC98LA049
- 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: 1021440f1845df4668ce206efabf13e98c79d75a5635890cc9bda32fcafe621b; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:43:36.542Z.