CEN16IA238 · Enstrom 280 FX
Blue Sun Air Enstrom 280 FX · Incident: fire/smoke (non-impact) while standing
From Ottawa Executive Airport (Z98) to Ottawa Executive Airport (Z98)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN16IA238
- 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
- Incident
- 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 280 FX
- Aircraft type
- Enstrom 280
- 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
- N518EG
- Operator
- Blue Sun Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ottawa Executive Airport (Z98), Zeeland, MITo Ottawa Executive Airport (Z98), Zeeland, MI
- Aircraft age
- About 13 years (built 2003)
- 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
- Standing · engine(s) operating
- 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
- Fire/smoke (non-impact)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Minor
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student conducted a preflight inspection of the helicopter in preparation for the student's first flight. The flight instructor reported that, after engine start and before takeoff, he saw the lights on the panel flicker and smelled smoke. About the same time, he noticed ground personnel running toward the helicopter. He and the student exited the helicopter, and ground personnel extinguished an engine fire.
Examination of the engine's exhaust band clamp assembly revealed that the clamp's two U-shaped retainer portions had fractured at spot weld locations. The incident is consistent with the failure of the exhaust band clamp, which allowed hot exhaust gases to enter the engine compartment and a fire to ensue.
Probable cause
The exhaust band clamp failure, which resulted in an engine fire due to hot exhaust gases entering the engine compartment.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN16IA238
- Event ID
- 20160630X70958
- Case number
- CEN16IA238
- 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: ebd96a435148b9c20bfe893f3d71f38a61c41e3a277c4d0bb732dc7408d39fcc; retrieved 2026-09-16T03:35:42.678Z.