CHI08FA293 · Robinson R44 II
Robinson R44 II · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From 2IG3 · Whiting, IN to Kenosha Regional Airport (ENW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI08FA293
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Robinson R44 II
- Aircraft type
- Robinson R44
- 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
- N999ZD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 2IG3 · Whiting, INTo Kenosha Regional Airport (ENW), Kenosha, WI
- 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
- Defining eventThe 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument-rated pilot departed from a casino heliport on a night cross country flight with a passenger. The helicopter impacted an occupied home and terrain about 1.5 miles south of the destination airport. Instrument meteorological conditions prevailed in the area of the accident. A witness said the helicopter sounded "really low" and the "engine sounded like it was at low RPMs." An on-scene investigation revealed the filament in the rotor's low rpm light bulb was stretched. No pre-impact helicopter or engine anomalies were detected. The pilot's logbook showed he had accumulated 329 hours of total flight time. The pilot had recorded 37.25 hours of night flight time.
Probable cause
The pilots failure to maintain clearance from terrain resulting in an in-flight collision with a house. Contributing to the accident was the night instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) and the pilot's lack of experience of flying in IMC.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI08FA293
- Event ID
- 20080925X01525
- Case number
- CHI08FA293
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. 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: ce519dd181c36aef813aea09270f7e7973a470292fc6a0208f63581055c45e46; retrieved 2026-09-13T19:29:06.259Z.