LAX01LA058 · Robinson R22 BETA
West Air Helicopters Robinson R22 BETA · Accident: hard landing
From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX01LA058
- 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 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
- N7189K
- Operator
- West Air Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT)To 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
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Remedial action, delayed
- Pilot in command › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the practice 180-degree autorotation landing, the helicopter touched down hard, the main rotor severed the tail boom, and the helicopter rolled on its side. The first pilot reported that, during four of six prior autorotations performed by the second pilot, it was necessary for the him to assume control of the helicopter and make power recoveries due to high landing flares, improper airspeed, and improper rotor rpm. During the seventh autorotation, the landing approach that resulted in the accident, the first pilot stated that the second pilot first let the main rotor rpm get too high, then too low, and then let airspeed get low. The first pilot again took control and applied engine power, but this time, as the ground approached more rapidly than before due to recovery from a low airspeed and low rpm condition, the second pilot "began to scream" and interfered with the first pilot's control by pulling up on the collective. The first pilot could not overpower him, the rotor rpm decayed further, and a hard landing resulted. The first pilot reported there were no mechanical problems with the helicopter. The second pilot reported that, as he initiated the final autorotation, the first pilot said "hold on, hold on," and the second pilot thought he was again taking the controls and relinquished them to him. As the helicopter continued the descent, the first pilot continued to say "hold on, hold on," and the second pilot became worried because the ground approached rapidly and the low rpm horn had been on for several seconds. When the second pilot realized they were going to crash and the first pilot wasn't doing anything to arrest the situation, he (the second pilot) took the controls and tried to flare and pulled full up collective to cushion the landing.
Probable cause
The pilot-in-command's inadequate supervision of the second pilot and delay taking control of the aircraft and implementing remedial action. A factor in the accident was the second pilot's interference with the pilot-in-command's operation of the collective flight control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX01LA058
- Event ID
- 20001218X45441
- Case number
- LAX01LA058
- 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: 04761e0352009b70c60f8b4ac74e09ce119ff50aaedcf7ea43b1498336483910; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:02:00.457Z.