WPR09LA156 · Enstrom 280FX
Enstrom 280FX · Accident: fuel exhaustion en route
From Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD) to Wendover Airport (ENV)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR09LA156
- 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 280FX
- Aircraft type
- Enstrom 280
- 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
- N280AD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ogden Hinckley Airport (OGD), Ogden, UTTo Wendover Airport (ENV), Wendover, UT
- 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
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated that during the preflight inspection for the cross-country flight, they did not physically check the fuel level, but relied on the fuel gauge, which indicated about 32 gallons (210 pounds) of fuel, of which 2 gallons were unusable. About 2 hours into the flight, the low fuel pressure light came on and the engine began to sputter and miss. The flight instructor took control of the helicopter and began an autorotation, during which the engine quit. The helicopter subsequently contacted the ground and the main rotor blades struck the tail boom sheering the tail rotor shaft. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector performed a post accident inspection of the helicopter. During the inspection, less than 1 gallon of fuel was noted in both fuel tanks. When power was applied, the low fuel pressure warning light illuminated. After 1 gallon of fuel was added to each fuel tank, the low fuel pressure warning light extinguished and the engine was started. According to the pilot the helicopter used 16.6 to 18.5 gallons per hour at an average ground speed of 100 knots.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion, which resulted from an inadequate preflight inspection by both pilots and their failure to ensure that adequate fuel was on board for the flight. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor's inadequate supervision of the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR09LA156
- Event ID
- 20090319X04510
- Case number
- WPR09LA156
- 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: 26132589bd7c86eab407e8423f876c3f25efb22812f08fdcefc8e30d247b20ac; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:51:05.534Z.