CHI05LA218 · Enstrom 480
Enstrom 480 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR) to Goshen Municipal Airport (GSH)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI05LA218
- 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 480
- Aircraft type
- Enstrom 480
- 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
- N480FX
- Operator
- Andrew Heytow
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR), Grand Rapids, MITo Goshen Municipal Airport (GSH), Goshen, IN
- 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
- Landing
- 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 control in flight
- 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
- Dual student › Ground resonance, encountered
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Ground resonance, 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 certified flight instructor (CFI) stated that the student smoothly lowered the collective and set the helicopter on the ground as he was rolling off the throttle. The helicopter then started to bounce (ground resonance) and the CFI reached down to make sure the collective was down and the throttle was off. The helicopter continued to "shake violently and ripped itself apart." The helicopter had a new design of elastomeric damper installed 91 flight hours before the accident. The new design dampers had been flight tested at the factory and approved by the Federal Aviation Administration prior to being put into service. The helicopter had experienced severe vibrations on two previous flights, one of which resulted in the chin bubble being broken. Inspection of the accident dampers, at the damper manufacturer's factory, determined the dampers were within manufacturer's specifications. After the accident flight the helicopter manufacturer recalled all the new design elastomeric dampers.
Probable cause
Ground resonance experienced by the pilots.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI05LA218
- Event ID
- 20050819X01290
- Case number
- CHI05LA218
- 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: 83623a8c36cd88538f77b3f9c8336701feb5d9c072d2a68c3e155cd9425c8e8c; retrieved 2026-09-21T09:04:46.046Z.