LAX07CA247 · Robinson R22 Beta
Robinson R22 Beta · Accident: hard landing
From Chino Airport (CNO) to Chino Airport (CNO)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX07CA247
- 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
- N10QD
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chino Airport (CNO), Chino, CATo Chino Airport (CNO), Chino, 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
- 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 › Airspeed, not maintained
- Dual student › Rotor RPM, not maintained
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
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 landed hard during a practice autorotation maneuver. Following the private pilot's unsuccessful attempt at a 180-degree autorotation, the certificated flight instructor instructed him to perform the maneuver again. The private pilot entered the autorotation and as the descent proceeded, he utilized the collective to maintain the rotor revolutions per minute (rpm) within the normal operating range. Through the turn, the instructor noticed that the helicopter was gradually assuming a nose-low attitude. The instructor advised the student to level the helicopter and continue to maneuver through the turn. The instructor subsequently assumed authority of the flight controls and the helicopter continued to descend through 100 feet above ground level (agl). The helicopter was at an airspeed of 40 knots and vibrating with the low rotor warning horn sounding when the instructor leveled the helicopter as it simultaneously contacted the ground. The helicopter touched down hard and slid on its belly to the edge of the runway surface. The instructor reported no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airframe or engine prior to the accident. He stated that the accident may have been prevented if he had assumed authority of the controls earlier in the maneuver.
Probable cause
The private pilot's failure to maintain the proper airspeed and main rotor rpm, which resulted in a high rate of descent and subsequent hard landing. Also causal was the certificated flight instructor's delayed remedial action.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX07CA247
- Event ID
- 20070910X01357
- Case number
- LAX07CA247
- 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: d647b9aee9187d9b88827a69271d02db8429506f9a322144f880e142af2da187; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:32:36.397Z.