MIA07CA079 · Robinson R-22 Beta II
Ocean Helicopters Robinson R-22 Beta II · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) on approach
From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45) to F45
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA07CA079
- 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 R-22 Beta II
- Aircraft type
- Robinson R-22
- 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
- N7535Z
- Operator
- Ocean Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport (F45), West Palm Beach, FLTo F45
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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 (non-mechanical)
- 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 › Checklist, improper
- Dual student › Mixture, inadvertent deactivation
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated that he and his student were on downwind at an altitude of 500 feet, preparing to land the helicopter. He further stated that as they performed prelanding checks, the student pilot within the space of a second removed the guard and pulled the mixture, causing the helicopter's engine to cease operating. The instructor said he immediately entered autorotation, and further stated that the wind was coming from the left, i.e. from the south, and there was no place to turn left due to trees and a road, so he turned right. He said he then saw some trees so he continued to turn right to an open grove, and then started "full down." The student was depressing the right pedal, and the instructor said he continued to maintain rpm as high as possible for the full down, pushed forward, and affected the landing. He said the helicopter landed and continued with its nose to the left due to the right pedal being depressed by the student, and it rolled slightly on its right skid, then collapsed, and came to rest on its belly.
Probable cause
The student pilot's inadvertent shutting off of the mixture control while performing the prelanding checks that resulted loss of engine power and a roll over during the subsequent forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA07CA079
- Event ID
- 20070525X00638
- Case number
- MIA07CA079
- 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: 458abff9ef8a1fd4fbb60b36a83b4759fc74fa61b3e6ba3ed5d426f7a104f879; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:52:41.350Z.