A mining engineer in the Upper Peninsula

Rudy Enstrom was a mining engineer in Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula with no aeronautical training and a determination to build his own helicopter. His first efforts were not outstanding, but they caught the eye of local businessmen, who backed him, hired experienced engineers and in 1959 incorporated the R.J. Enstrom Corporation. Its first product, the piston-engined F-28, was certified by the FAA in April 1965. By then Enstrom himself had been pushed out of the company that still bears his name. A hallmark of the design, kept ever since, was hiding the main rotor pitch links inside the hollow rotor shaft to cut drag.

F. Lee Bailey and the Shark

In October 1968 the household-products group Purex bought control, hoping for a turbine version that would take more than twenty years to arrive. In January 1971 it sold its stake to F. Lee Bailey, the celebrity criminal defence lawyer, who renamed the company and threw himself into it. Under Bailey the factory turned out more than a hundred helicopters a year, and in 1974 he launched the streamlined 280 Shark, an immediate success. A stretched four-seat Hawk ran into technical trouble just as the economy cooled, draining the company’s reserves, and Bailey sold up in 1979.

Kiam, Kamen and Chongqing

A procession of owners followed, among them Victor Kiam and Dean Kamen, later the inventor of the Segway. Kamen pushed through the turbine 480, born as the TH-28 for a US Army training competition that Enstrom lost; the commercial 480 was certified in November 1993 and found military customers including Japan’s Ground Self-Defence Force and the Royal Thai Army. A Swiss investor bought the company in 2000, and in January 2013 the Chongqing Helicopter Investment Corporation of China. The Great Recession had cut the workforce to 60 and output to six helicopters in 2010; Chinese money lifted it to 200 people and 26 helicopters in 2013. Venezuela ordered sixteen 480s in 2014.

Bankruptcy and a second life

It did not last. In January 2022 Enstrom filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy; customer support ended on 19 January and the Menominee factory closed two days later with just 30 employees left. A first rescue bid collapsed when its finance fell through. In May 2022 Surack Enterprises bought the assets, won an FAA production certificate that December and flew the first new-build 480B in January 2023. By May 2025 the revived company had more than 180 employees, had delivered helicopters to Zambia and Peru, and was launching 480B Signature and Elite versions; full FAA and EASA approval for new 480B deliveries followed in April 2026. More than 1,100 Enstroms had been built by 2011.

Factories

• Menominee factory · Menominee–Marinette Twin County Airport, Michigan — Closed 21 January 2022; reopened under Surack Enterprises

People

• Rudolph J. Enstrom · founder, mining engineer — Removed from the company before the F-28 reached the market
• F. Lee Bailey · owner 1971–1979 — Criminal defence lawyer; launched the 280 Shark
• Dean Kamen · owner — Inventor of the Segway; introduced the 480
• Chuck Surack · owner since 2022