NYC04CA199 · Robinson R44
Robinson R44 · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Cape May County Airport (WWD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC04CA199
- 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 R44
- Aircraft type
- Robinson R44
- 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
- N315SG
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cape May County Airport (WWD), Wildwood, NJTo 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
- 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 › 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
As the helicopter was being set down onto a dolly during the hours of darkness, it felt unstable, and the pilot elected to abort the landing. As the pilot raised the collective, the helicopter lurched forward and began to spin to the left. The pilot lowered the collective, reduced the throttle, and the helicopter touched down hard onto the ground, spreading the landing skids. Inspection of the dolly, and the landing skids on the helicopter, revealed that the rear portion of the left skid became stuck under metal framework, which was exposed in an open area near the center section of the dolly.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate visual lookout while conducting a nighttime landing to a dolly, which resulted in a stuck skid, and subsequent hard landing. A factor was the nighttime conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC04CA199
- Event ID
- 20040929X01522
- Case number
- NYC04CA199
- 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, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2004-08-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 3a96132d5a5b396d29dfe72ec2379082156e1f9d139db00fe9eea185bb0e9559; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:49:29.832Z.