CHI05LA173 · Robinson R22 Beta
Robinson R22 Beta · Accident: fire en route
From Lansing Municipal Airport (IGQ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI05LA173
- 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
- N997SA
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lansing Municipal Airport (IGQ), Chicago, ILTo 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
- Fire
- 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
- Lubricating system, oil cooler › Punctured
- Pilot in command › Visual lookout, restricted
- Rotor drive system, main rotor drive belt › Separation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter sustained substantial damage following an in-flight fire, hard landing, and subsequent ground fire. The pilot's accident report stated, "We were flying ... when I noticed clutch light on. The light stayed on for longer than 7 [seconds] and my decision was to pull clutch circuit breaker to save other belt. I took over the controls when the clutch light went on and I started to set my self up for emergency landing. ... At the same time I noticed smoke inside the cockpit and the smoke was filling inside fast. ... At about 1100 MSL I noticed low rpm light and horn went on, so I lowered the collective and entered autorotation. ... We exited the aircraft and could see the flames above the belts about 3 feet tall." Burnt pieces of alternator and drive belts were recovered from the site. A separated section of a recovered drive belt measured about a foot in length. The bottom quarter of the dipstick had oil on it when removed. The oil cooler exhibited damage on its lower and inboard surfaces, along the aft edge. The lower aft corner of the cooler was separated at its seam there. A dark media covered the engine in the area adjacent to the oil cooler. An oil like media was found on the tail rotor's guard and on the vertical stabilizer. The tailcone was burned away at its forward end. No pre-impact failures of the flight control system were found. The landing gear exhibited downward yielding.
Probable cause
The separation of the drive belt, during cruise, leading to the puncturing of the oil cooler and subsequent fire. An additional cause was the pilot's restricted lookout during the emergency landing resulting in the hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI05LA173
- Event ID
- 20050707X00953
- Case number
- CHI05LA173
- 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: dbe12e035d95b8db7933394fd2a41cfc3b1ebcbf90d52aa7a4ee74fa3f157be8; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:42:36.545Z.