Skip to content

Atlas / NTSB / DEN88LA137

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event DEN88LA137

1988-06-26 MISSOULA, Montana, United States Airport · MSO None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Factual narrative

A CHECK AIRMAN AND A COMMERCIAL PLT WERE PERFORMING AN INSTRUCTIONAL FLT. DURING CLIMBOUT AFTER A PRACTICE AUTOROTATION, THE ENGINE OUT AUDIO AND LIGHT WARNING ACTIVATED. BOTH PILOTS VERIFIED AN ACTUAL ENGINE OUT AND ENTERED AN AUTOROTATION. THE HELICOPTER TOUCHED DOWN ON SOFT TERRAIN WITH SOME FORWARD MOVEMENT AND LOW ROTOR RPM. THE MAIN ROTOR BLADES CONTACTED THE TAIL BOOM AND SEVERED IT. A POST ACCIDENT INSPECTION SUPERVISED BY AN FAA AIRWORTHINESS INSPECTOR, FAILED TO REVEAL ANY EVIDENCE TO EXPLAIN THE REPORTED ENGINE FAILURE. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database (Pre-2008 Archive) Retrieved: 2026-02-12

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_1988_DEN88LA137.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (engine failure). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗