SEA05FA019 · Robinson R22 Beta
Robinson R22 Beta · Accident: rotor failure/malfunction en route
From Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05FA019
- 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
- 2 · 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
- N4029Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arlington Municipal Airport (AWO), Arlington, WATo 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- Rotor failure/malfunction
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Rotor system, main rotor › Diverged
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
This was the pilot-rated student's first instructional flight in the recently rebuilt helicopter, which he purchased three days prior to the accident flight. About 5 minutes after the helicopter's departure on the accident flight, witnesses reported hearing a loud bang and watching the helicopter fall to the ground. The helicopter impacted terrain in an approximately level attitude, coming to rest in an upright position. There was no postcrash fire. All major components of the helicopter were accounted for and recovered before being moved to a secured storage facility. Both of the helicopter's doors separated from the aircraft in flight. The right door was recovered intact and not damaged, while the left door was accounted for in multiple fragmented pieces, including the door handle and frame, and the door latching mechanism. Both tail rotor blades were located 500 to 600 feet prior to the main impact point, with one blade exhibiting two large impact areas near the tip of the leading edge. One impact area was more rounded than the other, with the other impact area being broader and very flat. Examinations of paint transfers revealed that the material on the leading edge of a piece of main rotor blade and on the door latching mechanism were transferred paint from the tailboom, and that the yellow paint on the main rotor blade was similar to the paint from the tail rotor blade and likely from the same source. The sequence of events preceding the day of the accident flight, as well as the physical evidence examined during the investigation, indicates that the door pins were not installed prior to the flight. Physical evidence consistent with the helicopter's main rotor diverging from its normal plane of rotation and striking the left windscreen was observed in the form of an area of black transfer material, which measured 24 inches by 5 inches on the upper left outboard area of the left windscreen. The initiating event that produced the main rotor divergence could not be determined.
Probable cause
The divergence of the main rotor from its normal plane of rotation for an undetermined reason, resulting in rotor contact with the aircraft's left windscreen. The failure of the door pins to be installed was a factor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05FA019
- Event ID
- 20041207X01933
- Case number
- SEA05FA019
- 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: ed59ae02bb2d9ee6b8881f172c3d5be0c88b4b64975031be3149e6be38de79e7; retrieved 2026-09-20T18:11:29.415Z.