ERA13TA261 · Bell 407
Howard County Police Department Bell 407 · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Fort Meade Executive Airport (FME) to Fort Meade Executive Airport (FME)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA13TA261
- 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
- Government
- 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
Bell 407
- Aircraft type
- Bell 407
- 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
- N407HC
- Operator
- Howard County Police Department
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Meade Executive Airport (FME), Fort Meade, MDTo Fort Meade Executive Airport (FME), Fort Meade, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 7 years (built 2006)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a routine police patrol flight, while about 600 feet above the ground, the helicopter suddenly yawed to the left and the red "ENGINE OUT" warning light illuminated. The engine lost all power and the pilot performed an autorotation landing on a nearby football field. While avoiding obstacles, the helicopter landed hard, resulting in substantial damage to the airframe. A postaccident examination of the engine revealed no damage or obvious reason for the loss of power.
The engine's electronic control unit (ECU) was removed and was shipped to the manufacturer's facility for evaluation and testing. The examination of the ECU revealed that the engine was operating normally until an unexpected activation of the full authority digital electronic control overspeed protection system fuel reduction solenoid, which is internal to the ECU, resulting in an uncommanded in-flight engine shutdown. A subsequent ECU functional review confirmed that a short circuit failure of a tantalum capacitor was the source of the ECU malfunction. After the accident, Bell Helicopter issued an Alert Service Bulletin and Rolls-Royce issued an accompanying Commercial Engine Bulletin that included the installation of an overspeed adapter to reduce the likelihood of a false overspeed activation.
Probable cause
The short circuit failure of a tantalum capacitor, internal to the engine’s electronic control unit, resulting in an uncommanded shutdown of the engine in flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA13TA261
- Event ID
- 20130531X95830
- Case number
- ERA13TA261
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2013-05-31.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4fc5643ef05b7977296837015ebbb16af68f64f77f33620194933ec9b66c79e4; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:44:59.840Z.