CEN15CA274 · Enstrom F 28C
Enstrom F 28C · Accident: abnormal runway contact during landing
From Lewis University Airport (LOT) to Lewis University Airport (LOT)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15CA274
- 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
- N51778
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lewis University Airport (LOT), Romeoville, ILTo Lewis University Airport (LOT), Romeoville, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 37 years (built 1978)
- 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
- Landing · landing roll
- 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
- Abnormal runway contact
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certified flight instructor (CFI) was giving flight instruction in the piston engine powered helicopter to an experienced airplane pilot, who had a total of about 2 hours of helicopter flight experience. The pilot receiving instruction was hovering the helicopter while oriented into the wind and he allowed the rotor RPM to decrease. While the helicopter was turning to the left, the CFI took over control, but was unable to regain RPM. The helicopter continued to turn to the left and the CFI conducted a downwind emergency running landing to soft muddy turf. After a ground run of about 15 to 20 feet the helicopter began to turn to the right and skids of the helicopter dug into the soft turf. The helicopter rolled 90 degrees onto its left side and both main rotor blades impacted terrain. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the main rotor system, transmission, tail rotor, tail boom and fuselage. The CFI reported that he had been too slow in taking remedial action. A postaccident examination of the airframe and engine revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The characteristics displayed by the helicopter were indicative of it encountering a dynamic rollover.
Probable cause
The certified flight instructor (CFI) did not maintain directional control during a downwind emergency running landing to soft muddy terrain, which resulted in a dynamic rollover. Contributing to the accident was the CFI's delayed or insufficient remedial action when the pilot receiving instruction did not control the rotor RPM during hovering flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15CA274
- Event ID
- 20150617X30910
- Case number
- CEN15CA274
- 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: 2ae0a4746f17b37d2b533da786550c1cf080a2e836b019f3129b1196e2a6a713; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:26:05.271Z.