LAX98LA042 · Robinson R22 BETA
Robinson R22 BETA · Accident: hard landing
From Whiteman Airport (WHP) to Long Beach International Airport (LGB)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX98LA042
- 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 R22 BETA
- Aircraft type
- Robinson R22
- 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
- N45SG
- Operator
- Jack Watson
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Whiteman Airport (WHP), PACOIMA, CATo Long Beach International Airport (LGB)
- 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) › Crew/group briefing, not performed
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the autorotation, the student allowed the aircraft to descend lower than he had previously and was instructed to increase his flare. The student said he believed this now meant that they would be executing a full touchdown autorotation; however, he did not confirm this with the instructor. As he leveled the aircraft a sink rate developed. The instructor reached for the controls to reapply throttle but did not announce his intention. The student held the throttle at idle and pulled pitch delaying the instructor's efforts with his tight grip on the controls. The aircraft fell though, landing hard on the left skid. The aircraft bounced and rolled onto its left side. The instructor had not briefed the student on the performance standards before executing the maneuver, nor had he announced the method to be used for a positive transfer of controls. The student did not verify the instructor's performance standards, recognize the excessive rate of descent, or relinquish control of the throttle.
Probable cause
the flight instructor's failure to thoroughly brief his student on the performance standards of the proposed autorotation and the method to be used for a positive transfer of controls. The student's failure to verify the performance standards of the autorotation, to recognize an excessive rate of descent, and to relinquish control of the throttle to the instructor were factors in this accident.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX98LA042
- Event ID
- 20001208X09208
- Case number
- LAX98LA042
- 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: 03cf04c1995eaba7fdcb634cfe9ad10aa79c561cf3ad98517a5a7942f5504aab; retrieved 2026-09-22T18:11:23.140Z.