CHI98LA190 · Rotorway EXEC 90
Rotorway EXEC 90 · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From LOOMIS, NE to Jim Kelly Field (LXN)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI98LA190
- 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
Rotorway EXEC 90
- Aircraft type
- 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
- N132RS
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From LOOMIS, NETo Jim Kelly Field (LXN)
- 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 · descent
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Autorotation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot/builder, the homebuilt helicopter was in cruise at 1000 feet agl when he initiated a 200-300 foot per minute descent. After approximately one minute, at an altitude of approximately 500-700 feet agl, the engine lost power. He executed an autorotation and forced landing into a corn field. The pilot stated that the helicopter had some forward velocity on landing, causing one of the skids to sink and get caught in the soft terrain. The helicopter subsequently nosed over and was substantially damaged. The temperature and dewpoint on the surface was reported to be 42 degrees F and 38 degrees F respectively. According to carburetor icing charts, the accident flight was operating in conditions favorable to carburetor icing. Post accident investigation revealed that the carburetor heat system was operating. The pilot stated that during the descent phase of flight, the engine temperatures were indicating in the low end of the green arc, but he did not notice the carburetor temperature gauge indication. The Vice President of RotorWay, International agreed to issue an Advisory Bulletin to all registered owners of RotorWay helicopters having the RI-162 engine, informing them of the background of this accident, as well as alternate way of carburetor icing prevention and avoidance.
Probable cause
An improper autorotation by the pilot in command. Factors contributing to this accident were the accumulation of ice in the carburetor resulting in a total loss of engine power, and the soft terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI98LA190
- Event ID
- 20001211X10238
- Case number
- CHI98LA190
- 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 1998-06-04.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2ba57728633461472055dbdba44c5223572fbb69ca3836575f8c442aa48ead60; retrieved 2026-09-22T17:42:47.556Z.