DEN07CA131 · Robinson Helicopter R22 Beta
Premier Helicopters Robinson Helicopter R22 Beta · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (KBJC) to Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (KBJC)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN07CA131
- 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 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
- N7508Y
- Operator
- Premier Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (KBJC), Broomfield, COTo Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport (KBJC), Broomfield, CO
- 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
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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 › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Dual student › Rotor RPM, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the flight instructor, he and his private pilot student were conducting a "currency flight" and the instructor had just finished demonstrating a 180 degree autorotation. The student was performing a second 180 degree autorotation. The instructor stated that at 200 feet above ground level, the student brought power on; however, the rotor rpm was low. The instructor stated that the student brought the "collective up" and the rotor rpm continued to drop. The helicopter impacted the runway in a "high rate of descent", resulting in substantial damage. The instructor reported no anomalies with the helicopter or its systems. An examination of the helicopter's systems revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain rotor rpm resulting in a loss of aircraft control during a simulated 180 degree auto-rotation. Contributing to the accident was the inadequate flight status supervision by the flight instructor and the student pilot's inadequate recovery procedures.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN07CA131
- Event ID
- 20070810X01162
- Case number
- DEN07CA131
- 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: 8ec25a99efae1ba9d3ae545f9272a063b50d57aae754c4920e9a8ca091f04aec; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:34:58.736Z.