LAX00LA172 · Robinson R22 BETA
Robinson R22 BETA · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Valley Center, CA (no airport) to L39 · Ramona, CA
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX00LA172
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N622EH
- Operator
- Marcus Phares
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Valley Center, CA (no airport)To L39 · Ramona, CA
- 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 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Dynamic rollover, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the student pilot, he was a rated commercial pilot working toward his 20 hours of indoctrination into the aircraft. 'We were going to practice emergency procedures in the aircraft and get a little bit more familiar with flying it.' The student was flying the helicopter and decided to fly over an Indian Reservation to look at their motocross track for future photography work in the helicopter. The student told the instructor to take the controls and fly a racetrack pattern over the track and make an aerial application type turn at the end of the track to reverse course. The student would then try and duplicate the maneuver. As they changed controls from one another they would say, 'You got it,' or ' Okay, I got it' to confirm the transition. After the maneuvers were completed over the track, a critiquing took place while the student was flying in a hover. After the critiquing the student reported that he told the instructor to fly us out of here and we will go over to Ramona. According to the student, when the instructor took the controls he said, 'I got it.' About the same time, the student said that the helicopter drifted a little bit and lost a little altitude. The student got back on the controls and the instructor said 'I got it' and he let go. The helicopter again drifted a little bit and the student saw through the lower bubble a rock sticking up out of the brush. The brush was about 5 feet high. The helicopter drifted over, the skid hit the rock, and the helicopter went into a dynamic rollover. The Safety Board examined the wreckage after recovery. There were no airframe or engine pre-accident discrepancies or mechanical malfunctions observed during the examination of the recovered remains.
Probable cause
The failure of the flight instructor to maintain control of the helicopter, resulting in skid contact with an obstacle and dynamic roll over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX00LA172
- Event ID
- 20001212X20863
- Case number
- LAX00LA172
- 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 2000-04-27.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 2e2506fcde19fa161a3f2a326c23b634e9b53bacaccec9cc36c8a63c35aee5db; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:17:01.051Z.