ERA21LA309 · Enstrom 280 FX
Beta Air Enstrom 280 FX · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) en route
From Plattsburgh International Airport (PBG) to Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport (BTV)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA21LA309
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- N36DK
- Operator
- Beta Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Plattsburgh International Airport (PBG), Plattsburgh, NYTo Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport (BTV), Burlington, VT
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1985)
- 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot reported that while enroute he smelled and then observed smoke in the cockpit. He also observed a rapidly rising exhaust gas temperature despite moving the mixture to full rich. The pilot initiated a precautionary landing during which the helicopter experienced a partial and then total loss of engine power. During the final segment of the autorotation, the helicopter impacted trees and landed hard on a causeway. Postaccident examination of the engine found significant soot and thermal damage, which precluded a determination of the specific source of the in-flight engine fire. However, one cause of the fire could be eliminated. Specifically, the heaviest area of thermal damage was located around the No. 3 cylinder near the turbocharger. The outer portion of the turbocharger displayed significant thermal damage, but the turbocharger exhaust and inlet clamps were intact and remained tightly installed with safety wires present. Therefore, leakage of exhaust gases from the turbocharger was not the cause of the in-flight fire. The external damage to the turbocharger indicated that its high temperature surfaces were possible ignition sources for an ignitable liquid, such as lubricating oil or fuel. The flexible fuel and oil lines all displayed significant thermal damage, and some were destroyed by fire. Several oil lines were located near the thermal damage in the forward left portion of the engine compartment. Therefore, lubricating oil from these lines was a possible fuel source for the fire. In addition, because the flexible fuel lines were either damaged or destroyed, fuel from these lines could not be eliminated as a source of fuel for the in-flight fire.
Probable cause
An in-flight fire originating in the engine compartment near the turbocharger from a source that could not be determined, which resulted in a loss of engine power and led to an autorotation and a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA21LA309
- Event ID
- 20210731103595
- Case number
- ERA21LA309
- 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, coordinates, cause areas. 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: a8697a974b94cb9ddfe3f2f22e66c164bb0d2898b528da151d17f5988d80a637; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:21:24.180Z.