LAX02LA189 · Robinson R22 Beta
Silver State Helicopters Robinson R22 Beta · Accident while maneuvering
From Henderson Executive Airport (HND) to North Las Vegas Airport (VGT)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX02LA189
- 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 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
- N7176S
- Operator
- Silver State Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Henderson Executive Airport (HND), Henderson, NVTo North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), North Las Vegas, NV
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 › Flare, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter landed hard during an autorotation following the failure of one clutch drive belt. While maneuvering about 500 feet above ground level during an aerial photography business-related flight, the pilot and passenger smelled an unusual odor. About 5 seconds later, the pilot felt a jolt and observed the "Clutch Light" illuminate in the cockpit. The pilot initiated an autorotative descent but misjudged his landing flare, and the helicopter touched down hard on the underlying level open terrain. During the event, the clutch light illuminated continuously. The pilot did not follow the prescribed flight manual emergency procedure to pull the clutch circuit breaker. Engine power was not lost. The pilot allowed rotor rpm to decrease, and he erroneously entered an autorotation rather than performing the prescribed immediate landing while being prepared for the possibility of an autorotative descent. The subsequent wreckage examination revealed one of the two rotor system drive (vee) belts had broken. The second belt was intact, with the lower section of the belt found on the lower pulley in the correct position. The upper section of the belt on the upper pulley was found shifted forward one groove on the pulley.
Probable cause
The pilot's misjudged landing flare during an autorotation, which resulted in a hard landing. The pilot's failure to follow the listed emergency procedures in the rotorcraft flight manual and the partial failure of the rotor system's drive belts were factors.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX02LA189
- Event ID
- 20020620X00946
- Case number
- LAX02LA189
- 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: 61f22f41061d33ce4dcbadb545180aa59cd99237011f4928f8d3e4c90d97f98e; retrieved 2026-09-22T10:52:04.048Z.