Groupe TVA Robinson R-44 accident
Robinson R-44 · Accident: hard landing
From Montreal Mirabel International Airport (CYMX) to Montreal Mirabel International Airport (CYMX)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR10WA148
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- 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
- Charter & commuter
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
Robinson R-44
- Aircraft type
- Robinson R-44
- 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
- C-GDSF
- Operator
- Groupe TVA
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montreal Mirabel International Airport (CYMX), MontrealTo Montreal Mirabel International Airport (CYMX), Montreal
- 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
- Non-U.S., Commercial
- 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
- 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
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On December 16, 2009, at 0720 eastern standard time, a Robinson R-44, Canadian registered C-GDSF, executed an emergency landing near the Bonaventure Highway, in Montreal, Canada. The pilot and passenger were seriously injured, and the helicopter was substantially damaged.
The helicopter was to provide highway traffic information to a local TV station when the pilot informed air traffic control that he was conducting an emergency landing on the helipad at Mel Studio. The helicopter struck the ground at a high rate of descent approximately 800 feet short of the helipad.
The investigation is under the jurisdiction of the Government of Canada. This report is for information purposes only and contains only information released by the Government of Canada. Further information pertaining to this accident may be obtained from:
Transportation Safety Board of Canada 1901 Research Rd Bld U-100 Gloucester, Ontario
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR10WA148
- Event ID
- 20100225X64638
- Case number
- WPR10WA148
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e502129021b2397344e94c392a0ff5f6bc5fc62d530050499f730d576ec0bb1e; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:42:30.361Z.