LAX05CA314 · Robinson R22 Beta
Robinson R22 Beta · Accident: hard landing
From HKO · Kailua-Kona, HI to HMU · Kamuela, HI
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX05CA314
- 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
- N82001
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From HKO · Kailua-Kona, HITo HMU · Kamuela, HI
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Flare, misjudged
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While executing a practice 180-degree full touchdown autorotation, the helicopter landed hard, spreading the landing gear skids, and the main rotor blades flexed and chopped off the tailboom. The helicopter bounced into the air, landed again, and spun several times before coming to a stop. The student initiated the maneuver at 500 feet above ground level. He started the turn abeam the runway, and when they were 90 degrees into the turn, he noted his airspeed at 65 knots and rotor rpm at 105 percent. He increased the collective to keep the main rotor from over speeding as he continued the turn. The pilot leveled off and aligned the helicopter with the runway for landing. His flight instructor told him to lower the collective, which he did, as well as inputting aft cyclic to start the flare. The instructor took over the flight controls when it became evident that the student was unable to arrest the descent. The instructor made sure the helicopter was leveled and attempted to cushion the landing prior to ground contact. The instructor indicated that the combination of a higher descent rate, higher airspeed, and density altitude led to the accident. Both pilots reported that there were no mechanical anomalies. The airport was at an altitude of 2,671 feet mean sea level, and the calculated density altitude was 4,200 feet.
Probable cause
The student's misjudged landing flare, and the instructor's inadequate supervision and delayed remedial action. A factor in the accident was the high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX05CA314
- Event ID
- 20051101X01764
- Case number
- LAX05CA314
- 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 2005-09-23.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 99b390f42881387f7f17a3660c415758cf602d0ce008206ae3ccb3272d78aafd; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:20:44.883Z.