LAX00LA089 · Robinson R22B
Robinson R22B · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Upolu Airport (UPP) to Hana Airport (HNM)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA089
- 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 R22B
- 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
- N62DF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Upolu Airport (UPP), Hawi, HITo Hana Airport (HNM), HI
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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 in flight
- 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 › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Loss of tail rotor effectiveness, not corrected
- Pilot in command › Vortex ring state, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During landing approach at the completion of a solo cross-country flight, the student pilot was slowing below 30 knots to enter a hover when the helicopter began spinning to the right. The student was unable to arrest the right yaw and entered an autorotation, which terminated in a rotating collision with terrain 137 feet short of the runway. He was attempting to land with a left crosswind and/or quartering tailwind from a direction and at a speed conducive to a tail rotor vortex ring state condition. The condition results in tail rotor thrust variations, which can require rapid and continuous pedal movements to maintain heading and cause unanticipated right yaw rates to develop. If the yaw rate is not controlled immediately, the helicopter can rotate into a wind azimuth region where weather cock instability will accelerate the right yaw. This condition will be aggravated at airspeeds below 30 knots when the loss of translational lift results in an increased power demand (more torque) and a corresponding increase in antitorque requirement. The student's total flying experience and pilot-in-command time was about 60.6 and 5.2 hours, respectively.
Probable cause
The student's failure to maintain directional control after encountering a tail rotor vortex ring state induced right yaw.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA089
- Event ID
- 20001212X20400
- Case number
- LAX00LA089
- 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: e0c52b4390bb5fc1efd13ac9b0e412faffeaa70a6cc128e403113f366e6c4cf3; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:43:30.332Z.