CEN13LA099 · Enstrom F-28C
Enstrom F-28C · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Brownwood Regional Airport (BWD) to Abilene Regional Airport (ABI)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13LA099
- 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
- 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
- N574H
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Brownwood Regional Airport (BWD), Brownwood, TXTo Abilene Regional Airport (ABI), Abilene, TX
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Loss of engine power (total)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A student pilot and flight instructor departed with full fuel tanks on a round-robin cross-country flight in the student pilot's helicopter. The first three legs were uneventful with landings at all three locations. The flight instructor and the student pilot did not visually check the fuel tanks at stops during the flight. On the last leg, the instructor noted the fuel gauges and made the decision to continue to the destination. The student pilot told the flight instructor that the fuel quantity on board the helicopter was low. The flight instructor informed him that the fuel gauges were often faulty and that they had enough fuel to complete the return leg of the flight. About 2 miles from the destination, the helicopter yawed left twice, and the engine and rotor rpm began to decay. The instructor lowered the collective and leveled the helicopter. The rotor rpm decayed even further, to the point that it was below the minimum for autorotative descent. The instructor pushed the nose over then brought the helicopter back to a level attitude. He reported that this caused the blades to cone upward and increased the rotor rpm, but the rpm was still below the red line. The instructor nosed the helicopter over again and turned left but was unable to regain rotor speed. The instructor was certain that, in addition to the loss of engine power, the overrunning clutch had not disengaged the engine from the transmission. The instructor leveled the helicopter about 3 feet above the ground and applied collective but reported that only about one-third of normal rotor rpm was available. The helicopter landed hard and the main rotor blades impacted the tailboom. A postaccident examination revealed that the fuel tanks contained no usable fuel, and, when serviced with fuel, the engine was operational. An examination of the overrunning clutch operation revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to conduct an autorotation following the loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion. Contributing to the accident was the failure of the flight instructor and the student pilot to visually check fuel levels to ensure adequate fuel on board for the planned flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13LA099
- Event ID
- 20121212X02303
- Case number
- CEN13LA099
- 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: 114bcb50f0d4d59d9d204ac09eff55d130a68213dbd3f5d9dedc4df271e9e223; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:34:09.164Z.