LAX06CA001 · Robinson Helicopter Company R22 Beta
Robinson Helicopter Company R22 Beta · Accident: hard landing during an emergency descent
From Tucson International Airport (TUS) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX06CA001
- 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 Helicopter Company 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
- N926SH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tucson International Airport (TUS), Tucson, AZTo 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
- Emergency descent
- 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
- Pilot in command › Airspeed, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Rotor RPM, not maintained
- 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
The helicopter touched down hard and rolled over following a practice 180-degree autorotation. The instructor pilot reported that he was having his student practice a number of autorotations for an upcoming check ride. During the last autorotation, the student rolled out of the turn; the helicopter slowed to 60 knots, and the low rotor rpm warning horn sounded and the caution light illuminated. The instructor called for a go-around about 80 feet above the ground, but the rotor rpm did not increase. He took control of the helicopter from the student and applied collective and forward cyclic to touchdown in a level pitch attitude. The helicopter impacted the ground and began sliding to the side. The right skid dug into the soft ground and the helicopter rolled over three times before coming to rest on its left side. The instructor and student reported no anomalies with the 218-hour helicopter prior to the event. The flight school that employed the instructor had a policy, which dictated that instructors were to perform practice autorotations at a controlled airport equipped with emergency response equipment; however, if they did not, they were supposed to recover from autorotations 500 feet above the ground.
Probable cause
the student pilot's failure to maintain adequate airspeed and rotor rpm during a practice autorotation, and the instructor's failure to adequately monitor the maneuver, which resulted in a hard landing and roll over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX06CA001
- Event ID
- 20051114X01836
- Case number
- LAX06CA001
- 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: 9728e26bc2b1f60f5df7b8452a00f97be2c3011aa3285ff49ffac93f577c21c2; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:53:09.239Z.