WPR26LA270 · Enstrom F-28F
Enstrom F-28F · Accident: fire/smoke (non-impact) while taxiing
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's damage. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR26LA270
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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 F-28F
- Aircraft type
- Enstrom F-28
- 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
- N8624B
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 39 years (built 1987)
- 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
- Taxi
- 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
- Substantial Possible conflict
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On July 21, 2026, about 0815 mountain daylight time, an Enstrom F-28F helicopter, N8624B, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Malad City, Idaho. The pilot and pilot-rated passenger were not injured. The helicopter was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 personal flight. The pilot in command, who was positioned in the left seat reported that the intent for the flight was to fly around the local area. After conducting a preflight inspection with no anomalies noted, he started the engine, conducted engine runup checks, increased the engine and rotor RPM to 100 percent and ascended to a hover. While conducting the helicopters in ground effect hover checks, he noticed that the manifold pressure was high, but still in the green. The pilot air taxied from the hangar parking area to the north toward the taxiway intersection near the approach end of runway 35 and saw that the manifold pressure was abnormally high. He landed the helicopter on the asphalt ramp to assess the instruments and conduct another magneto check, but when he rolled the throttle to flight idle, the engine lost total power. The pilot stated that with the engine and rotor RPM still married, he immediately engaged the starter and the engine restarted, but he noticed smoke emanating from the right side of the engine compartment, and there were flames on the lower left side of the engine. He attempted to shut down the engine by pulling the fuel/air mixture control on the instrument panel to the idle cut off position, but the engine continued to operate. He then turned the ignition switch to the off position to no avail, and he engaged the manual fuel shut-off located between the pilot and passenger seat, but the engine continued to operate. Unable to shut down the engine, the pilot and the passenger egressed the helicopter and searched for a fire extinguisher. Unable to locate a fire extinguisher, they contacted first responders, remained a safe distance from the burning helicopter and waited for the fire department to extinguish the blaze. The wreckage has been recovered to a secure facility for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR26LA270
- Event ID
- 20260721203436
- Case number
- WPR26LA270
- 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: 7b50915e8a56e7942f9540f6e20574b1b0bcc9b78cee51efbf38a0868728caab; retrieved 2026-09-17T05:18:34.916Z.