SEA00LA121 · Fairchild Hiller FH-1100
Fairchild Hiller FH-1100 · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Milwaukie, OR to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00LA121
- 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
Fairchild Hiller FH-1100
- Aircraft type
- Fairchild Hiller FH-1100
- 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
- N2784D
- Operator
- Bennie B. Finnell II · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Milwaukie, ORTo 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 · 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Turboshaft engine, gas generator turbine shaft › Fractured
- Unknown › Maintenance, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that while northbound along the Willamette River at 700 feet above ground level (AGL), the helicopter yawed left and the ENGINE OUT light came on. The pilot stated he put the helicopter into autorotation, told his passengers to brace for a hard landing, gave a Mayday call and put the helicopter in what he thought was the safest place to land. The helicopter landed hard on the river bank, seriously injuring the pilot, but the passengers were not injured. During post-accident engine examination, a red sealer, which appeared as high temperature RTV, was noted to be applied extensively and heavily on several areas of the engine. Disassembly examination of the engine revealed red sealant adhered to the engine interior surfaces, as well as at various points in the engine oil system. Subsequently, the spur adapter gearshaft (SAG, a shaft that joins the gas producer turbine to the engine compressor) was found fractured, heat-distressed, and dry of lubrication. During an oil flow test of the oil delivery tube servicing the SAG, no oil flowed from the oil jet targeted for the SAG. Closer examination of the oil delivery tube revealed that this oil jet was clogged. Since complete maintenance records were not provided to investigators, a full service history for the engine could not be established.
Probable cause
Improper maintenance (excessive/improper sealant application) by an unknown person, and subsequent fracture of the spur adapter gearshaft resulting in a total loss of engine power. Factors included foreign material/substance in the engine oil, a blocked oil delivery tube oil jet, and oil starvation in the area of the spur adapter gearshaft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00LA121
- Event ID
- 20001212X21601
- Case number
- SEA00LA121
- 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: c47a200807a6b8fc5740ca1e28f9f693ef9862f99d9864d928b0099aeed88ca6; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:35:54.568Z.