ERA09LA051 · Robinson Helicopter R44
D&o Aviation Robinson Helicopter R44 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Cyril E. King Airport (TIST) to Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport (TJIG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA051
- 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 R44
- Aircraft type
- Robinson R44
- 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
- N452JM
- Operator
- D&o Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cyril E. King Airport (TIST), St. ThomasTo Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport (TJIG), San Juan, PR
- 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
- Maneuvering · hover
- Defining eventThe 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After a 1.5-hour flight, while hover taxiing, the pilot initiated a turn to the left when the helicopter pitched up and rolled left, striking the main rotor blades against the ground and eventually coming to rest on its left side. The Puerto Rico Port Authority then moved the helicopter and cleaned up all of the scattered helicopter parts and debris prior to the arrival of a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) inspector and without any photo documentation of the wreckage. The FAA inspector subsequently took photographs of the wreckage that included the forward left cyclic servo control (push-pull) tube attachment point on the non-rotating swashplate. The control tube was not attached and the swashplate attachment ear had no corresponding attachment hardware. In addition, the control tube rod end was separated from the top of the tube in overload. A search of the wreckage and the crash site by the FAA inspector did not produce the rod end, nor did a subsequent court-ordered search. A detailed examination of the helicopter revealed that the interior bore of the left lateral servo attachment ear had multiple scoring and impact marks consistent with the dimensions and spacing of the attachment bolt threads. The marks also indicated that the rod end attachment bolt had been forcibly pivoted while backing out of the hole, which likely occurred because the retaining nut was missing. During the helicopter's most recent annual inspection the left lateral servo was removed and replaced; however, neither the inspection nor the replacement of the servo required disconnection of the upper servo control tube rod end from the swashplate attachment ear. The pilot's operating handbook required the pilot to ensure that the flight control rod ends were "free without looseness," and that all fasteners were "tight" during preflight inspections. However, it is unknown whether the retaining nut was missing before the flight or if it came off in flight.
Probable cause
The detachment of the forward left servo control tube upper rod end attachment bolt during a hover due to separation of its retaining nut for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA051
- Event ID
- 20081112X70016
- Case number
- ERA09LA051
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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: 809bf472cfa3c773af5358ad3e326a95984cbf6bff36aea9f02e9a1373234886; retrieved 2026-09-15T10:32:41.107Z.