NYC99LA090 · Robinson R-22
Helicopter Flight Training Robinson R-22 · Accident: hard landing
From Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA090
- 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
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
Robinson R-22
- Aircraft type
- Robinson R-22
- 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
- N151RM
- Operator
- Helicopter Flight Training
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP), Ronkonkoma, NYTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- First occurrenceThe 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
- Hard landing
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Rotor RPM, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot was receiving rotorcraft instruction and was on approach to land. As the helicopter passed through about 15 feet, the flight instructor was also on the flight controls. The airspeed was about 20 MPH, with a descent of 200-300 FPM. When the collective was raised the helicopter continued to descend, landed hard, and rolled over. When interviewed the flight instructor remembered the LOW ROTOR warning horn had sounded. Post accident examination of the engine and mechanical throttle compensator found no evidence of a mechanical failure. The helicopter manufacturer had published a safety notice which cautioned against airspeed of less than 30 knots until the descent rates were less than 300 FPM.
Probable cause
the lack of supervision by the flight instructor which resulted in a low rotor condition and subsequent hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA090
- Event ID
- 20001205X00554
- Case number
- NYC99LA090
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
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: 1050021c511eb30008bd867d27d051a3cf8442334074bd61f7625cdad40e6aa5; retrieved 2026-09-22T15:27:46.434Z.