DEN05LA036 · Robinson R22
Robinson R22 · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during takeoff
From Provo Municipal Airport (PVU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN05LA036
- 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
- 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
- N333UH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Provo Municipal Airport (PVU), Provo, UTTo 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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) › Altitude/clearance, 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 flight instructor, he took control of the helicopter and departed in the direction of the lake. He stated that due to the gray sky, it was difficult to discern between the water and the sky. According to the student, however, the instructor lowered the helicopter's nose during the turn. The instructor "leveled the ship and pulled in power." The student stated that the helicopter "lost lift and sank towards the water." The landing skid caught the water and the helicopter rolled over and came to rest on its skid in approximately 2 feet of water, 250 feet off shore. The main rotor blades were bent and the cabin area was crushed. An examination of the helicopter's systems, conducted by the FAA, revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
the flight instructor's failure to maintain clearance from the water. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor's inability to detect a descent because of the obscuration between the water and the horizon due to the gray sky
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN05LA036
- Event ID
- 20050118X00058
- Case number
- DEN05LA036
- 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: 401c642456480ae5fa828611c37df4f5d1bd0a9ddc66b62d335c8ba7201ac63d; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:05:54.784Z.