NYC98LA053 · Robinson R-22 BETA
Robinson R-22 BETA · Accident: partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From 8N8 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC98LA053
- 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 BETA
- 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
- N8015V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 8N8To 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 · climb to 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
- Partial loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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 › Emergency procedure, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated the helicopter was approximately 800 feet above ground level, climbing 300 feet-per-minute at 60 knots airspeed, when he heard the low rotor RPM warning horn and saw the corresponding low RPM warning light. The pilot said he entered autorotation '...with a nasty tailwind.' The pilot selected an open field for a forced landing site, determined he would overshoot, but continued straight ahead into trees. Prior to entering the trees that bordered the field, the pilot '...attempted to roll on throttle but got no response.' According to a manufacturer's Safety Notice: 'No matter what causes the low rotor RPM, the pilot must first roll on throttle and lower collective simultaneously to recover RPM before investigating the problem.' The pilot reported there were no mechanical deficiencies prior to the low RPM warning and the engine ran to manufacturer's specification after the accident. According to an icing probability chart published by the FAA, atmospheric conditions at the time of the accident were conducive to '...serious icing at cruise power.'
Probable cause
the pilot's improper response to the low rotor RPM warning. Factors in the accident were the pilot's failure to turn for the forced landing area and the carburetor icing conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC98LA053
- Event ID
- 20001208X09371
- Case number
- NYC98LA053
- 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: ea0a0aedc395e8d8ae5db060dbca2aa732a3248d93a7d721794a4a6fc8d3e99f; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:59:20.239Z.