SEA05LA070 · Robinson R-22 Beta
Avia Aviation Services Robinson R-22 Beta · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Corvallis Municipal Airport (KCVO) to Corvallis Municipal Airport (KCVO)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05LA070
- 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 R-22 Beta
- Aircraft type
- Robinson R-22
- 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
- N303PR
- Operator
- Avia Aviation Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Corvallis Municipal Airport (KCVO), Corvallis, ORTo Corvallis Municipal Airport (KCVO), Corvallis, OR
- 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 · hover
- 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
- Dual student › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student was at the controls as the instructional flight approached the airport from the east on a practice VOR-A approach. Because the student misunderstood the instructor’s directions to touch down on the numbers of Runway 17, he proceeded to a grassy area between the approach ends of Runway 35 and Runway 27. During the last part of his approach to the grassy area, the student had the helicopter headed into the wind, but when he was about 30 to 40 feet above the ground, he initiated a right turn in order to air-taxi to the helicopter landing pad. During that turn, the helicopter was exposed to a direct tailwind of between five to seven knots, and during that sequence of events, the student failed to maintain directional control, and the aircraft began spinning to the right. Although the instructor pilot took control of the aircraft, her remedial action was not taken soon enough to recover control before the helicopter's left skid impacted the terrain. After the skid hit the terrain, the aircraft rolled over onto its left side, where it came to rest. There were no issues with the helicopter's flight control system, nor any problem with the engine's production of power.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain directional control while attempting to turn in the direction necessary to air-taxi to the landing pad, and the flight instructor's failure to take remedial action soon enough to correct the problems created when the student lost directional control. Factors include a tailwind encountered by the aircraft during the aforementioned turn.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05LA070
- Event ID
- 20050406X00423
- Case number
- SEA05LA070
- 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 2005-04-05.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0697528ab9396047e6d30abc057231a744461837de41271e301bbdebf9b7f1a9; retrieved 2026-09-22T06:06:46.736Z.