DEN04CA131 · Robinson R22 BETA
Robinson R22 BETA · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Logan-Cache Airport (LGU) to Logan-Cache Airport (LGU)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN04CA131
- 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
- N7530D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Logan-Cache Airport (LGU), Logan, UTTo Logan-Cache Airport (LGU), Logan, UT
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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) › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Rotor RPM, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the instructor, after demonstrating some ground maneuvers, he entered the pattern to demonstrate a practice autorotation. The instructor stated that they entered the autorotation at approximately 850 feet above the ground. The airspeed, and rpm were in the green, and the descent was around 1500 feet per minute. The instructor stated that at approximately 40 feet above the ground, they started the flare. At the end of the flare, he announced "recover," and then announced, "I have the controls." The instructor was unable to recover the engine rpm. The instructor leveled the helicopter and landed hard on the runway. The impact with the runway crushed the landing gear skids upward, and buckled the fuselage and tail boom.
Probable cause
the instructor's failure to maintain adequate rotor speed during the landing flare, resulting in a hard landing. Contributing factors include the student's delay in relinquishing the controls and the instructor's improper supervision.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN04CA131
- Event ID
- 20040924X01490
- Case number
- DEN04CA131
- 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: 4a941973b5787b19b73af45f41ee07eb82ea4550cf56165c1f202fca9661500e; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:51:03.446Z.