DEN00LA113 · Enstrom 280CB
Enstrom 280CB · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Dunwich Airport (SRR) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN00LA113
- 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 280CB
- Aircraft type
- Enstrom 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
- N440RB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dunwich Airport (SRR)To 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was giving helicopter sightseeing rides to people at a local fair. His ground support partner was planning to intermittently fuel the aircraft's right saddle tank with 5 gallon cans to maintain a 25% fuel load. The two 21 gallon (20 gallons usable) fuel tanks do have a 3/8 inch in diameter interconnecting line, but it is recommended that refueling be done through the fueling caps in each tank. The interconnecting line has a 'T' connector in it with a 3/8 inch in diameter main fuel line leading to the engine. If the helicopter were refueled on one side while the engine was running, it would be possible (at low fuel levels) for the other fuel tank to cavitate. The fuel gauge indication is derived from a single fuel level float device that is located in the right fuel tank. Neither the pilot nor his ground support partner could remember how much flight time had been flown or how much fuel had been put in the aircraft. The pilot said that during his 5th flight of the day, the engine power deteriorated and he performed an autorotation. During the landing sequence, the main rotor blades cut off the tail boom and slapped the ground, and the left skid supports were broken. A postaccident engine test run identified no abnormalities with the engine. The pilot registered the helicopter on May 24, 2000, and had accumulated approximately 25 to 27 hours in make and model.
Probable cause
the loss of engine power as a result of fuel exhaustion due to the pilot's inadequate preflight planning. A contributing factor was the pilot's lack of experience in the model of helicopter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN00LA113
- Event ID
- 20001212X21211
- Case number
- DEN00LA113
- 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: fc473f8e2885e4945d723c29076dcf2da88bccde5ce61b76430fe8a186bc752e; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:11:37.799Z.