ERA10LA361 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during initial climb
From West Melbourne, FL to West Melbourne, FL (private airstrip)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10LA361
- 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
- N74603
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From West Melbourne, FLTo West Melbourne, FL (private airstrip)
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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
During takeoff, while the helicopter was about 80 to 100 feet above the ground, the clutch caution light illuminated. The light stayed lit only long enough for the pilot to notice it, and then it turned off. The clutch light illuminated once again, and the pilot felt the helicopter vibrate. The pilot initiated a descent and heard a loud “pop and grinding noise” from the rear of the helicopter as he lowered the collective. The pilot autorotated and impacted the ground in a nose-low attitude. A postaccident examination of the drive system found that the grooves in the upper sheave were worn beyond serviceable limits. The helicopter’s maintenance manual requires inspection of the sheaves prior to installation of the drive belts. An entry in the logbook states that the drive belts were removed and replaced 22.9 hours prior to the accident. Given the level of wear in the upper sheave grooves, it is unlikely that maintenance personnel inspected the sheave prior to drive belt installation.
Probable cause
Separation of the main rotor drive belts due to maintenance personnel’s failure to adequately inspect the upper drive sheave prior to installing the belts.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10LA361
- Event ID
- 20100716X93450
- Case number
- ERA10LA361
- 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: 2e525da992d18d456710c220b28e249d9794ffd2c4c6eaf1f6290f3c74c80b60; retrieved 2026-09-15T14:42:48.238Z.