CEN11LA414 · Enstrom F-28C-2
P & N Enstrom F-28C-2 · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure while maneuvering
From Plattsmouth Municipal Airport (PMV) to Blair, NE
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11LA414
- 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-28C-2
- 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
- N5694A
- Operator
- P and N
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Plattsmouth Municipal Airport (PMV), Plattsmouth, NETo Blair, NE
- 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
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/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
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was conducting an aerial observation flight in a helicopter when he felt a high vibration in the tail rotor system in conjunction with a sharp jerk in the anti-torque pedals. The pilot autorotated to a wet field and the helicopter subsequently rolled over. A postaccident examination of the helicopter revealed that a pitch link retaining bolt had come loose from the pitch link attachment horn. The bolt and its associated hardware separated in flight and the bolt hole where the pitch link attached was elongated. According to the helicopter’s preflight inspection checklist, the pitch link should have been checked before flight for binding or looseness; however, the pilot could not recall if he actually checked it. The helicopter underwent a 100-hour maintenance inspection two weeks before the accident. At that time, the maintenance manual required an inspection in which the pitch links would have to be disconnected then reassembled. Since the pitch link retaining bolt and its associated hardware were never recovered, it could not be determined if the pitch link assembly had been properly installed or torqued at the last inspection. The pitch link failure occurred about 14 hours after this inspection. The Federal Aviation Administration reported that they were not aware of any instances prior to this accident where the tail rotor pitch link assemblies became loose and failed prematurely after proper installation.
Probable cause
The failure of a tail rotor pitch change link due to the retaining bolt becoming separated in flight. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s inadequate preflight inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11LA414
- Event ID
- 20110623X74529
- Case number
- CEN11LA414
- 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: 714f9a2a4bf4c7f072962a6e8a204261c3945b111fa186a5b8f7177a9efb9ab1; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:20:19.044Z.