CEN18LA167 · Enstrom Helicopter Corp 280C C
Enstrom Helicopter Corp 280C C · Accident: fuel exhaustion while maneuvering
From Wood County Airport - Collins Field (JDD) to Dow Ranch Airport (63TX)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN18LA167
- 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 Helicopter Corp 280C C
- 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
- N67RE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Wood County Airport - Collins Field (JDD), Mineola, TXTo Dow Ranch Airport (63TX), Kerens, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1979)
- 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter had recently undergone some major maintenance, andthe private pilotwas picking up the helicopter to return to his residence. The helicopter departed for the accident flight with about 35 gallons of fuel onboard for the 1.5-hour flight. During the flight, the pilot noticed that the transmission and cylindertemperatures had increased. The pilot subsequently performed an off-airport landing in a field,kept the engine running, and waited for the temperatures to return to normal. After the temperatures returned to normal, the pilot departed. While maneuveringat 1,000 ft above ground level about 1.5 miles from his residence, the pilot heard a noise or “bang” sound. The engine then lost total power, and the pilot initiated an autorotation, during which the helicopter impacted trees and terrainand then came to rest upright.
Postaccident examination of the helicopter revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. The examination revealed that both fuel tanks were empty and that the fuel system was not breached. Given that the pilot conducted an unplanned landing and takeoff, he should have accounted for the extra fuel used as he managed the fuel in flight. However, he did not do so, and his inadequate in-flight fuel management likely led to the loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.
Probable cause
The total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion and the pilot’s inadequate in-flight fuel management.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN18LA167
- Event ID
- 20180511X94158
- Case number
- CEN18LA167
- 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: 3828f50c260252e7f9ac55308c5e82b096047761b34300fe94133a3f2ebf82d5; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:09:28.156Z.