NYC01FA053 · Robinson R-44A
Robinson R-44A · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Manchester, KY (no airport) to Lexington, KY (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01FA053
- 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
- 3 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Robinson R-44A
- Aircraft type
- Robinson R-44
- 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
- N744FC
- Operator
- Fred A. Collatz · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Manchester, KY (no airport)To Lexington, KY (no airport)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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 encounter with weather
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Tree(s)
- 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 › Clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Weather evaluation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument rated pilot departed on a night cross-country flight with no record of a weather briefing. Although visual meteorological conditions prevailed, witnesses along the route of flight reported isolated areas of fog and low clouds were present. The terrain was rolling tree-covered hills with no ground lighting. Two witnesses in a vehicle saw a momentary glow behind a ridge covered by a low cloud. A tree with freshly skinned bark located near the top of a ridge was found 670 feet prior to where the main wreckage was found. The debris trail between the tree and main wreckage included components from the battery located in the nose of the helicopter, side doors, windshield plexiglas, part of the trailing edge of one main rotor blade, and part of one tail rotor blade. The helicopter burned at impact. No evidence of a mechanical failure or malfunction was found with the helicopter or engine. The pilot's total flight experience was estimated at about 386 hours with 60 hours in make and model.
Probable cause
the pilot's improper weather evaluation, and his failure to maintain terrain clearance while operating over unlighted terrain at night. Factors were the isolated areas of fog, and night conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01FA053
- Event ID
- 20010110X00080
- Case number
- NYC01FA053
- 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 2000-12-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 25397c83687b1ec5a19b12f334be3567b0e81477b123922cbda9339e4d238c9f; retrieved 2026-09-20T20:44:13.947Z.