CHI06CA155 · McFarland Rotorway Exec
McFarland Rotorway Exec · Accident: fire while maneuvering
From Mooresville, IN (private airstrip) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI06CA155
- 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
McFarland Rotorway Exec
- Aircraft type
- Mcfarland ROTORWAY EXEC
- 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
- N9164X
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mooresville, IN (private airstrip)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
- Maneuvering · hover
- 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
- Fire
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The amateur-built helicopter was destroyed by a fire that began in-flight and continued on the ground after landing. The flight instructor and dual student were not injured. The instructor and dual student reported that the instructional flight consisted of practicing hovering. They stated that approximately 20 minutes into the flight they thought they smelled smoke and decided to make a precautionary landing. The pilots reported that once they landed, smoke was coming out of the engine compartment and the engine had stopped. Both pilots exited the helicopter safely. Subsequent efforts to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful. A post accident examination was unable to determine the source of the fire due to the extensive damage to the helicopter.
Probable cause
An in-flight fire for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI06CA155
- Event ID
- 20060717X00954
- Case number
- CHI06CA155
- 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: 9abab302ff1fa739f6886cc6abbc049a9fdc76bf74d1432424363aa9279c0a14; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:45:26.932Z.