NYC08LA052 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE) to Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV)
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC08LA052
- 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
- N70035
- Operator
- Tim Roland
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Petersburg Clearwater International Airport (PIE), St. Petersburg, FLTo Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV), Gainesville, FL
- 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 · 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Pilot in command › Emergency procedure, not followed
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the helicopter was under flight instruction to add a rotorcraft rating to his certificate and was on a solo cross-country flight. The helicopter had been in cruise flight for about 1 hour and 20 minutes when the pilot noticed an intermittent illumination of the "clutch light" and perceived a loss of altitude. The pilot "reset the circuit breaker" and increased collective to regain the lost altitude. He then perceived a loss of rotor rpm and slowly and continuously lowered the collective to maintain the rotor rpm in the normal operating range. When the helicopter reached approximately 150 feet above ground level, the pilot could no longer maintain rotor rpm and entered autorotation. During the descent, he selected an empty parking lot for a landing, where the helicopter landed hard, bounced, and then rolled over onto its side. He added that the engine was running before and after ground contact, and he did not report any deficiencies in the handling characteristics of the helicopter. Functional testing of the clutch assembly revealed that the rigging and operation of the assembly were within factory specifications, but the engagement cycle time exceeded the factory limit. The pilot stated that he "reset" the circuit breaker, and continued to adjust the collective pitch to regain altitude and rotor rpm. The emergency procedure listed in the Pilot's Operating Handbook directed the pilot to "pull" the clutch circuit breaker and land immediately.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to follow the published emergency procedure. Contributing to the accident was a malfunction of the clutch assembly.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC08LA052
- Event ID
- 20071228X02002
- Case number
- NYC08LA052
- 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: 18ead8a939aa0a907a3646daecdc0b8d2b0378238f612b2c94aa547d8f5559ae; retrieved 2026-09-22T03:14:57.473Z.