WPR20LA191 · Enstrom 280 FX
Enstrom 280 FX · Accident while maneuvering
From Coeur D'Alene Airport - Pappy Boyington Field (COE) to Coeur D'Alene Airport - Pappy Boyington Field (COE)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR20LA191
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N280MM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Coeur D'Alene Airport - Pappy Boyington Field (COE), Coeur D' Alene, IDTo Coeur D'Alene Airport - Pappy Boyington Field (COE), Coeur D' Alene, ID
- Aircraft age
- About 17 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
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Shortly after takeoff on an instructional flight, a helicopter was maneuvering at a low altitude when the engine rpm “skyrocketed,” and the engine lost total power; the flight instructor (who was at the controls) reported hearing “backfiring” at the time, although the engine was still running. The flight instructor then had to maneuver the helicopter to avoid nearby power lines, but the helicopter impacted terrain. The main rotor blades struck the tailboom, and the helicopter subsequently spun around about 180° before coming to rest. A postcrash fire then ensued, which consumed most of the helicopter. Additionally, the student pilot stated to a witness after the accident that the helicopter was losing power.
An engine examination revealed that detonation had occurred in two of the four engine cylinders. (Detonation in a piston engine occurs when the fuel-air mixture in a cylinder detonates or explodes prematurely instead of being ignited by spark plugs and burning evenly and smoothly, as occurs with normal combustion.) Furthermore, damaged spark plugs were observed in one of the detonated cylinders as well as another cylinder. The combined effects of the detonation and damaged spark plugs likely caused the loss of engine power. Because the loss of power occurred at a low altitude, the flight instructor likely did not have enough altitude to adequately establish a steady-state autorotation to avoid the helicopter’s impact with terrain.
Probable cause
The total loss of power while maneuvering at low altitude due to the detonation of two engine cylinders and damaged spark plugs.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR20LA191
- Event ID
- 20200623X23649
- Case number
- WPR20LA191
- 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, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2020-06-24.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 23a58b68a08c8b7bd7ab7c7c709770a4c27865c326b3bfddb1b93dc03d2d6851; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:16:28.368Z.