ATL00LA003 · Robinson R-22-MARINER R-22-MARIN
Volar Helicopters Robinson R-22-MARINER R-22-MARIN · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during an uncontrolled descent
From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL00LA003
- 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-MARINER R-22-MARIN
- 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
- N2285Z
- Operator
- Volar Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), FT. LAUDERDALE, FLTo 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
- Uncontrolled descent
- 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 terrain/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(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and his student were practicing 180-degree autorotation landings. Prior to initiating their last autorotation to the left, they climbed to 500 ft. agl. The student was at the controls and began a steeper turn in an attempt to reach the aiming spot, and the helicopter entered a slight dive. As the student rolled out to begin the flare, the helicopter was below 100 ft. agl. The instructor then took control of the helicopter. He pushed forward to level the helicopter, then rolled the throttle and tried to pull up on the collective. The helicopter hit the ground in a level attitude, then became airborne again. During the impact sequence, the tail boom was severed. The helicopter then spun three or four times and landed on its left side. According to the instructor, there was no mechanical malfunction with the helicopter.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's delayed response in taking remedial action during a practice autorotation. Factors were his inadequate planned approach and his improper use of powerplant controls.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL00LA003
- Event ID
- 20001212X19905
- Case number
- ATL00LA003
- 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: 2b1b7e7d7fa8f327f3595896de788bfabab99359eee8e86186edfbadb30e3c22; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:21:42.600Z.