NYC98LA043 · Robinson R22 BETA
Airburst Helicopters Robinson R22 BETA · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Allegheny County Airport (AGC) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA043
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N55TP
- Operator
- Airburst Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Allegheny County Airport (AGC), Pittsburgh, PATo 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
- Maneuvering · hover out of ground effect
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Loss of tail rotor effectiveness, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was performing an out-of-ground-effect hover with a 10 knot tailwind in a Robinson R-22. When the pilot raised the collective to maneuver, and the helicopter began to spin to the right. The helicopter spun four times, descended, and impacted the ground. The pilot had about 100 hours of helicopter experience, and about 10 hours of out-of-ground-effect hover experience. After the accident, the pilot told a police officer that he exceeded the limitations of the tail rotor. FAA Advisory Circular (AC) 90-95 stated all single main rotor helicopters were susceptible to loss of tail rotor effectiveness (LTE). The AC advised pilots that when maneuvering between hover and 30 knots to avoid; tailwinds, out of ground effect hover and high power demand such as lowspeed downwind turns. It also advised the pilots to be aware of wind direction and velocity. In 1995, the FAA sent a letter to all U.S helicopter manufactures recommending they include a discussion on LTE in the operator's handbooks and flight manuals. The Robinson Helicopter Company has not complied with that request.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper out-of-ground hover procedure, which resulted in a loss of tailrotor effectiveness.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA043
- Event ID
- 20001208X09363
- Case number
- NYC98LA043
- 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: 1cf44818dc6118e434bb484fed9a34879d27a44c0ad3531cfc9b1909bd81e9c0; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:43:46.985Z.