MIA01FA004 · Robinson R-22
Volar Helicopters Robinson R-22 · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA01FA004
- 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
- 2 · 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
- N4004J
- Operator
- Volar Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport (FXE), Fort 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
- 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 › Descent, improper
- Pilot in command › Rotor RPM, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot experience a loss of engine power due to the failure of the No. 3 exhaust valve for undetermined reasons. The pilot entered autorotation and failed to maintain rotor rpm and the proper rate of descent resulting in an in-flight collision with terrain. The pilot had accumulated 67 hours in helicopters of which 18 were as pilot-in-command. The pilot's last known autorotation was 4 months before the accident.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain rotor rpm and the proper rate of descent during a forced landing/autorotation resulting in an in-flight collision with terrain. Contributing to the accident was a loss of engine power due to the failure of the No. 3 exhaust valve for undetermined reasons, and the pilot's lack of total experience in the R22 and recent experience in autorotations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA01FA004
- Event ID
- 20001212X22205
- Case number
- MIA01FA004
- 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: 29738921a66b9ce386372c714be9f19ab65b9d483b208974fc8c3ba2d6fd80ce; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:49:22.108Z.