CHI06LA021 · Enstrom F-28A
Enstrom F-28A · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Portland Municipal Airport (PLD) to Woodburn, IN (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI06LA021
- 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-28A
- 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
- N266Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Portland Municipal Airport (PLD), Portland, INTo Woodburn, IN (private airstrip)
- 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 · climb to 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 (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
- Engine assembly, connecting rod › Failure
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Operation with known deficiencies in equipment, attempted
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter was damaged during a forced landing following a loss of engine power during climb out. The pilot reported that the engine did not sound normal during the previous shutdown. The pilot stated that during a postflight inspection he noted the engine oil quantity was six quarts low. He added six quarts of oil before restarting the engine. After engine startup, the pilot walked around the helicopter and noticed smoke emanating from the engine compartment and heard the engine misfiring. The pilot stated that he brought the helicopter into a hover to see if the engine would sustain power. After hovering briefly, the pilot departed on the accident flight. The pilot reported that the helicopter experienced a total loss of engine power during climb out and an autorotation was performed into a cornfield. The pilot stated that he was unable to maintain directional control during landing due to the soft ground condition and the helicopter slid approximately 100 feet and turned about 190 degrees to the left. The pilot reported that the main and tail rotors contacted the ground, but the helicopter came to rest in an upright position. A witness reported seeing the helicopter on the ramp with the engine running. The witness reported that there was smoke coming from the engine compartment and that the engine was misfiring at idle power. The witness stated that the helicopter then departed with smoke trailing from the helicopter. An inspection of the engine revealed that the number two cylinder connecting rod had separated from the crankshaft. The rod cap, cap bolts, and bearing material were not recovered. The number two crankshaft journal surface was smooth, shiny, and did not show any evidence of heat discoloration.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to operate the helicopter with a known engine deficiency, the loss of engine power due to the connecting rod failure, and the pilot's failure to maintain directional control during landing. A factor to the accident was the corn crop and the soft terrain condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI06LA021
- Event ID
- 20051219X01993
- Case number
- CHI06LA021
- 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: 392156bed7b8e00520cb63394dbe775351b34c76bcb582d48e1152a69e9f6f61; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:16:07.072Z.