LAX94LA033 · Robinson R22A
Robinson R22A · Accident: in flight collision with object while maneuvering
From Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (STS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94LA033
- 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 R22A
- 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
- N8452Z
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport (STS)To 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 collision with object
- 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
- Object › Other
- Rotor system, tail rotor blade › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to statements from the pilot, his passenger, and ground witnesses, the pilot was providing helicopter rides to fellow employees at a company halloween party. While overflying the party location, a large mylar party balloon broke free and drifted up in the path of the helicopter. The tail rotor blades struck the balloon and then separated from the helicopter. The pilot initiated an autorotation to a parking lot and touched down hard. Responding sheriff's department officers found fragments of a mylar balloon about 100 feet southeast of the helicopter.
Probable cause
the separation of the tail rotor due to a collision with a mylar balloon and the subsequent hard landing during an autorotation. A factor in the accident was the dark night lighting conditions which limited the pilot's ability to see and avoid the balloon.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94LA033
- Event ID
- 20001211X13607
- Case number
- LAX94LA033
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1993-10-31.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 73d7a812235277771f7a5184116eec53929abbece5c887c7e5b9cee0072b7ff5; retrieved 2026-09-23T01:29:59.391Z.