LAX07CA090 · Robinson R22 Beta
Silver State Helicopters Robinson R22 Beta · Accident: hard landing
From Tucson International Airport (TUS) to Tucson International Airport (TUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07CA090
- 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
- N453SH
- Operator
- Silver State Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tucson International Airport (TUS), Tucson, AZTo Tucson International Airport (TUS), Tucson, AZ
- 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 › Rotor RPM, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Aircraft control, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While performing a simulated emergency landing during a Part 91 instructional flight, the helicopter touched down hard on open desert terrain, and a main rotor blade impacted the tail boom. The certified flight instructor was teaching his rotorcraft rated private pilot student to land under a simulated emergency condition where the objective was for the student to "land immediately." As the helicopter descended, the low rotor annunciator light illuminated and the corresponding warning horn sounded. Thereafter, the instructor attempted to perform a recovery. According to the instructor, initially both he and his student were simultaneously attempting to take corrective action and the student "had too strong a grip on the throttle for me to overcome." The instructor was handling the controls as the rotorcraft approached and contacted the ground. The instructor stated that despite his efforts, the helicopter touched down hard. No mechanical malfunctions were experienced during the flight.
Probable cause
The failure of the student pilot to maintain an adequate main rotor rpm and the instructor’s failure to maintain control of the aircraft.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07CA090
- Event ID
- 20070327X00330
- Case number
- LAX07CA090
- 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. 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: caab054b4e3ac3953b6fdbb8fad37cf1260fb17d8de860552e8e6ac8b941c6e3; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:01:53.469Z.