IAD01LA071 · Robinson R-22A
Robinson R-22A · Accident: roll over while maneuvering
From Atwater, OH (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD01LA071
- 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-22A
- 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
- N2242P
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Atwater, OH (no airport)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
- Maneuvering · hover in ground effect
- 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 › Remedial action, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said the purpose of the flight was to experiment with ballast added to the helicopter. He said that in its normal configuration, the helicopter tended to ascend and descend from a hover in a left-skid low attitude. The pilot said that with the proper placement of ballast, the center-of-gravity could be adjusted to attain a more wings-level attitude during takeoffs and landings to and from a hover. The pilot placed the ballast weight on the pad to the right of the helicopter prior to engine start. He said he intended to fly one trip around the traffic pattern, land the helicopter, set the throttle at idle, de-plane, install the ballast weight, then fly the helicopter around the pattern to note the difference in helicopter attitude in both hovering and forward flight. During the initial takeoff to a hover, the helicopter drifted right, struck the weight, and rolled over onto its side. When asked if he was familiar with the phenomenon of dynamic rollover, the pilot said: "I sure am. What I should have done was lower the collective, but I think I tried to maneuver out of it." The pilot said there were no mechanical deficiencies with the helicopter.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper remedial response to a dynamic rollover event, which resulted in the helicopter rolling over on its side.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD01LA071
- Event ID
- 20010709X01335
- Case number
- IAD01LA071
- 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: 490768159aaa0af99f6f4376f5d828af6572e8f91978907151f89bdcbf82e540; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:03:52.155Z.