MIA94LA051 · Robinson R-22
Robinson R-22 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA94LA051
- 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
- N931KC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport (OPF), OPA LOCKA, FLTo 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Pilot in command › Supervision, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated she was in cruise flight with the cabin doors removed, when she looked outside and her glasses blew off. She directed the passenger, who has a private pilot, single engine land airplane rating to fly the helicopter, while she looked outside trying to locate her glasses. The passenger descended to 4 to 5 feet agl, and made two low passes over the field, while she continued to look for her glasses. She heard the passenger state, 'Lori, Lori,' and heard the rotor rpm horn blaring. She took the the flight controls and lowered the collective pitch. The helicopter collided with the ground, and rolled over on its right side.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's improper supervision of an unqualified pilot while maneuvering at a low altitude. This resulted in a loss in rotor rpm due to improper flight control input (upward collective pitch), and subsequent in-flight collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA94LA051
- Event ID
- 20001206X00665
- Case number
- MIA94LA051
- 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: a8503053dac4d5008fb97b79f629ea6162521268e336d80ac6893d9eb772e9f5; retrieved 2026-09-23T01:23:50.567Z.