SEA07CA233 · Robinson R-22 Beta II
Silver State Helicopters Robinson R-22 Beta II · Accident: hard landing
From Tucson International Airport (TUS) to Tucson International Airport (TUS)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA07CA233
- 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
- N453SH
- Operator
- Silver State Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Tucson International Airport (TUS), Tucson, AZTo Tucson International Airport (TUS)
- 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, low
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Remedial action, delayed
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 reported that he was on a cross-country training flight with a student. He said the student was performing an off airport landing where the elevation was 4,500 feet mean sea level (msl); the density altitude was reported to be 7,300 feet msl. The flight instructor said that as the helicopter approached the landing site, it began to yaw right, and the left pedal was ineffective. He took control of the aircraft, and noticed that the main rotor RPM was low. He lowered the collective slightly and rolled on additional throttle. The flight instructor said that the left pedal would still not turn the helicopter into the wind. He lowered the collective again, allowed the helicopter to settle, and then pulled collective to cushion the landing. The main rotor contacted the terrain and mesquite shrub. The aircraft came to rest on its left side, facing the direction from which it came, and the tail boom was separated from the fuselage.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain rotor RPM during landing approach, and the delayed remedial action by the flight instructor. A contributing factor was the high density altitude weather condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA07CA233
- Event ID
- 20070831X01278
- Case number
- SEA07CA233
- 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: db83deef5af3816d5965c35593b740b1b17633d6ce0dad0500ac00f6033f86b4; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:31:52.878Z.