NYC99LA204 · Robinson R-22
Northern Lights Helicopters Robinson R-22 · Accident: loss of control on ground/water during takeoff
From 1B9 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC99LA204
- 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
- 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
- N20879
- Operator
- Northern Lights Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 1B9To 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
- Takeoff
- 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 on ground/water
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Mansfield, MA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
With his instructor outside the helicopter watching, the student pilot attempted to bring the helicopter to a hover. With the left skid in the air and the entire right skid on the ground, the helicopter rolled over. No pre-impact failures or malfunctions were found. Federal Aviation Administration Advisory Circular 90-87 (Helicopter Dynamic Rollover) states the following; 'During normal or slope takeoffs and landings with...one skid/wheel on the ground, the bank angle or side drift can place the helicopter in a situation where it is pivoting (rolling) about a skid/wheel which is still in contact with the ground....if a roll rate is permitted to develop, a critical bank angle...may be reached where roll cannot be corrected, even with full lateral cyclic.' The student pilot had logged a total of 27 hours of flight experience with all 27 hours in helicopters.
Probable cause
Was the student pilot's failure to maintain lateral control of the helicopter while bringing it to a hover. A factor in the accident was the student pilot's lack of total experience in helicopters.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC99LA204
- Event ID
- 20001212X19631
- Case number
- NYC99LA204
- 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: 194fee5be88c118b4a993c54daf6e198675c9528d2f8472169d27e0fff394941; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:25:50.601Z.