LAX07LA005 · Robinson R22 Beta
Silver State Helicopters Robinson R22 Beta · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) during initial climb
From Upland-Cable Airport (CCB) to Brackett Field (POC)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07LA005
- 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
- N821SH
- Operator
- Silver State Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Upland-Cable Airport (CCB), Upland, CATo Brackett Field (POC), La Verne, CA
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, improper
- Throttle/power lever, push/pull rod › Disconnected
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's engine suddenly lost power during initial climb on an instructional flight. The certified flight instructor (CFI) took the controls and autorotated to a hard touchdown in a gravel pit. After securing the helicopter, the CFI inspected the throttle linkage. He reported that something appeared disconnected behind the firewall. "When rotating the throttle from full open to full close, the push/pull tube that connects to the carburetor does not move." The subsequent examination of the helicopter's throttle spring assembly revealed that on a previous occasion improper maintenance had been performed. The helicopter's maintenance records did not reflect maintenance in this area. The inspection revealed that the upper rod end bearing was disconnected from the lower portion of the rod because it had not been safety wired as required. This maintenance error resulted in a total loss of throttle control.
Probable cause
Disconnection of the throttle control linkage due to improper maintenance, which resulted in a loss of engine power during initial climb.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07LA005
- Event ID
- 20061013X01516
- Case number
- LAX07LA005
- 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: 70e3a5358e38024e0623cb0abaf9f5294ed1882a9f4e5b8f08b4eaee3747d853; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:21:09.567Z.