DFW07LA197 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Smith Helicopters Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: rotor failure/malfunction en route
From Fort Stockton, TX to Fort Stockton, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07LA197
- 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
- N993KC
- Operator
- Smith Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Stockton, TXTo Fort Stockton, TX
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Rotor failure/malfunction
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
- Rotor drive system, main rotor drive belt › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The single-engine helicopter experienced a hard landing after a malfunction of the belt drive system for the main rotor. The pilot had just taken off from a trailer and had transitioned to low level cruise flight when he heard a loud bang. The pilot cross-checked his engine instruments and observed the engine RPM was excessively high and the rotor RPM was below 80 percent, accompanied by the low rotor RPM warning. The pilot then initiated an autorotation and landed hard with near zero forward speed. The aircraft bounced backwards after initial impact and came to rest in the upright position. The on-scene investigation noted that one of the v-belts to the main rotor drive system had separated which caused the other belt to slip off the upper spindle. The reason for the separation could not be determined.
Probable cause
The failure of the v-belt drive system to the main rotor for undetermined reasons. Contributing to the accident was insufficient altitude to perform a successful autorotation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW07LA197
- Event ID
- 20070923X01430
- Case number
- DFW07LA197
- 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: ed72a8b2edf2ac24bfdf3bd212892e7cac709dd0c5feeb6283f1fa3659a80896; retrieved 2026-09-21T08:44:17.606Z.