FTW98LA327 · Robinson R22 BETA
Robinson R22 BETA · Accident: in flight encounter with weather while maneuvering
From Centennial Airport (APA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW98LA327
- 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
- N8350N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Centennial Airport (APA), Englewood, COTo 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
- 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 encounter with weather
- 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
- Weather condition › Downdraft
- Weather condition › Windshear
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instructor and his student were practicing 180 degree autorotations, preparing for the student's commercial and flight instructor checkrides. The maneuvers were begun between 610 and 660 feet above the ground. They completed several autorotations without incident. The instructor said the helicopter dipped slightly as airspeed increased by 5 knots to 65-70 knots indicated. Main rotor rpm decreased slightly, so he made an aft cyclic input and lowered collective slightly. Rate of descent suddenly increased rapidly and the instructor decreased bank angle with cyclic, increased power, and raised the collective. He flared to arrest the rate of descent as much as possible and pulled collective to cushion the landing. The instructor said he thought wind shear or a strong downdraft caused the accident.
Probable cause
An encounter with unanticipated windshear or a downdraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW98LA327
- Event ID
- 20001211X10591
- Case number
- FTW98LA327
- 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: e502977f8f501f196742d7dfc433a91f0dd083072ac924fc1663cdb19c204f53; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:45:29.113Z.