DFW07LA167 · Rotorway 162F
Rotorway 162F · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Stratford, OK (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07LA167
- 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
Rotorway 162F
- Aircraft type
- Rotorway 162
- 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
- N888TD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stratford, OK (no airport)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
- En route · 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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
- Exhaust system, external supercharger › Seized
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The 5,770-hour commercial pilot/owner/builder of the single-engine experimental helicopter was in cruise flight at an altitude of approximately 1,000 feet, at an estimated airspeed between 70 and 100 knots, when "the helicopter suddenly yawed to the right." The pilot immediately and simultaneously applied left torque pedal to stop the yaw, lowered the collective, and entered an autorotation into the wind, at an airspeed of 70 knots. The helicopter touched down in an "uneven" field, rolled over, and came to rest on its left side. The pilot added that there were no warnings prior to or during the loss of power. A review of photographs of the damaged helicopter revealed structural damage to the airframe. The pilot reported that he had a total of 10 gallons of fuel on board at the time he departed and there was a small fuel spill at the accident site. At the time of the accident, the helicopter had accrued a total of 60.6 hours. Examination of the engine by the pilot revealed that the supercharger had seized which accounted for the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to a seized supercharger. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW07LA167
- Event ID
- 20070725X01012
- Case number
- DFW07LA167
- 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: 9ad44dd5ee759f3c6b2200277fcd1636cb0ffcb1e2d3704738c89aa4cc88dcaa; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:38:10.124Z.