DEN02LA051 · Enstrom F-28C
Falcon Helicopter Enstrom F-28C · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) while maneuvering
From Laramie Regional Airport (LAR) to Rawlins Municipal Airport/Harvey Field (RWL)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN02LA051
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 F-28C
- Aircraft type
- Enstrom F-28
- 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
- N5694Z
- Operator
- Falcon Helicopter
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Laramie Regional Airport (LAR), Laramie, WYTo Rawlins Municipal Airport/Harvey Field (RWL), Rawlins, WY
- 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
- Maneuvering · turn to reverse direction
- 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
- Partial 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 contamination
- 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
- Unsuitable terrain or takeoff/landing/taxi area › Encountered
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was conducting pipeline patrol and marking the positions of pipeline valves using a global positioning satellite receiver. The pilot said weather was clear but windy. Approximately 1 hour into the flight, the pilot made a turn to the west to come around over a location, and continued in the turn back to the east downwind. The pilot said he rolled out of the turn and started to pull some power for the turn back to the right to pick up the pipeline again when the helicopter yawed right and started losing power. The pilot said he immediately "lowered the collective, added throttle, and turned left to the north." The pilot said he was approximately 100 feet above the ground and had an airspeed of about 60 miles per hour. "With the bank and the autorotation I was able to stop forward motion and ground speed. I flared the helicopter, pulled pitch, and hit flat." The pilot said he shut down the engine after impact. "As far as I could tell the power never came back during the autorotation." An examination of the helicopter's fuel system showed water in the left and right fuel tanks. No other anomalies were found.
Probable cause
the unsuitable terrain encountered during the emergency autorotation, following a partial loss of engine power. Factors contributing to this accident were fuel contamination (water), the low altitude, the high winds, and the tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN02LA051
- Event ID
- 20020618X00911
- Case number
- DEN02LA051
- 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, coordinates. 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: a43a90fc256cf5ccdbc4cf5b15466b4dea2beb63fcb19ee960097911000dafcf; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:38:33.278Z.