ERA15LA280 · MD Helicopter Inc 369FF
Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority MD Helicopter Inc 369FF · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU) to Antonio Nery Juarbe Pol Airport (ABO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15LA280
- 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
MD Helicopter Inc 369FF
- Aircraft type
- MD Helicopters 369
- 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
- N5842Z
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Luis Munoz Marin International Airport (SJU), San Juan, PRTo Antonio Nery Juarbe Pol Airport (ABO), Arecibo, PR
- Aircraft age
- About 16 years (built 1999)
- 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
- 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
About 20 minutes into a flight, the helicopter's engine experienced a total loss of power while at an altitude of about 300 ft above ground level. The pilot then entered an autorotative descent, and during the landing attempt, the helicopter impacted an area of shallow water near a beach and the fuselage was substantially damaged. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed that the No. 2 bearing had failed most likely as the result of a reduction in oil flow to the bearing. Examination of the tube that fed oil to the bearing revealed that it was unremarkable; however, its design had been superseded with an improved design for new helicopters several months before the accident. The newly designed tube was implemented to "decrease the bearing temperature and improve the bearing performance."
Probable cause
A total loss of engine power due to insufficient lubrication to the engine's No. 2 bearing, which resulted in the failure of the bearing and a subsequent forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15LA280
- Event ID
- 20150724X55322
- Case number
- ERA15LA280
- 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: 8c137e2265e48b0790ffb6fe81daef04e308e9a2a64f2542f07edb64b4bbcae5; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:34:29.269Z.