NYC01LA086 · Robinson R-22B
Robinson R-22B · Accident: roll over during initial climb
From Dillant Hopkins Airport (EEN) to Dillant Hopkins Airport (EEN)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC01LA086
- 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
- Unknown
- 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-22B
- 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
- N910SM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Dillant Hopkins Airport (EEN), Keene, NHTo Dillant Hopkins Airport (EEN), Keene, NH
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Roll over
- 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(cfi) › Dynamic rollover, performed
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Visual lookout, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot was practicing hovering autorotations with a flight instructor onboard. They were performing the practice in an open field next to a runway. At the rear of the field behind the helicopter was a snowbank with an irregular line. There was a wind of about 10 knots on the nose of the helicopter. During each hovering autorotation, the helicopter ended up further aft than the preceding one. The flight instructor looked out of his left door and based upon the part of the snowbank that he could see, he thought he had about 50-75 feet to the snow bank. However, he was unaware that the left rear skid was already under the crust of the snowbank directly behind the helicopter. He took control of the helicopter with the intent of repositioning it to the middle of the field. When the flight instructor applied the collective to lift off, the helicopter pivoted on the left rear skid, and rolled over on its left side. The flight instructor reported the accident could have been prevented had he maintained better situational awareness of the snowbank in the field where they were practicing, and if he had used a two stage pickup, where he first made the helicopter light on the skids, and then applied the collective to lift off more slowly.
Probable cause
inadequate visual lookout by the flight instructor on the helicopter's proximity to the snowbank, and subsequent lift off, which resulted in a dynamic rollover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC01LA086
- Event ID
- 20010315X00590
- Case number
- NYC01LA086
- 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, coordinates. 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: 4ed9a611426ee66f76ff2bb0b3fbf3a1afcf5d0ff42f23e1d0cfc6f9853420a1; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:00:37.821Z.