CEN10CA156 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Rotor Envy Helicopters Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: dynamic rollover during takeoff
From Ellington Airport (KEFD) to Ellington Airport (KEFD)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN10CA156
- 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
- N822SH
- Operator
- Rotor Envy Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ellington Airport (KEFD), Houston, TXTo Ellington Airport (KEFD), Houston, 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Dynamic rollover
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student helicopter pilot was preparing for his fourth scheduled solo flight, intending to depart on a local flight. The student reported that as he started to raise the helicopter’s collective, the helicopter started to slide to the right. He added that he stopped moving the collective and applied left cyclic, and the helicopter stopped moving. He then continued to raise the collective to begin his hover. The helicopter rolled-over to the right, and impacted the ground. The flight instructor who was watching the student reported that he saw the helicopter move to the right about a foot, stop, and then, as the helicopter started to lift, it instantaneously rolled to the right and struck the ground. After the accident, both the instructor and student stated that it appeared the helicopter’s skid may have gotten caught in a crack on the ramp’s cement surface.
Probable cause
The student pilot's loss of directional control during takeoff, resulting in a dynamic rollover of the helicopter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN10CA156
- Event ID
- 20100315X20714
- Case number
- CEN10CA156
- 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, 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: 18760b41aaeaf72badfcc8fd0065c18e2f27d18eeabaeb9764c5cb82b603ccf9; retrieved 2026-09-15T13:44:52.918Z.