ERA10FA403 · Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) while maneuvering
From Madison Municipal Airport (52A) to Young Harris, GA
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA10FA403
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
- 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
- N34JS
- Operator
- Adam C. Reeves · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Madison Municipal Airport (52A), Madison, GATo Young Harris, GA
- 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
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The non-instrument-rated private pilot departed on a multi-leg cross-country trip without obtaining a weather briefing or filing a flight plan. Prior to the flight, the pilot asked a friend, a commercial helicopter operator, to accompany him on the trip, as the pilot had never flown over mountainous terrain. The friend could not accompany him due to a prior commitment and tried to dissuade the pilot from going because he thought the pilot needed mountain flying experience, but the pilot insisted on making the flight. When the helicopter failed to arrive at its destination, an alert notice was issued. The helicopter was located by aerial search in mountainous terrain 4 days after the accident. Examination of satellite images revealed that the wreckage was located in a box canyon and that the wreckage path was oriented opposite the intended route of flight. An AIRMET advisory for instrument meteorological conditions and mountain obscuration were current for the route of flight and the crash site. Satellite images from over the accident site around the time of the accident depicted an area of low stratiform clouds that extended over the area. Examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of pre-impact mechanical malfunction, and the damage was consistent with controlled flight into terrain.
Post mortem examinations and testing revealed heart disease and the use of amphetamine and anti-depressant medications. At least two of the medications that the pilot was taking are not permitted by the Federal Aviation Administration for use while flying, but he did not report them. However, it could not be determined whether the pilot's heart disease or his use of unapproved medications posed a significant risk to flight safety.
Probable cause
The non-instrument-rated pilot's continued visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in controlled flight into terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA10FA403
- Event ID
- 20100806X55641
- Case number
- ERA10FA403
- 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: fb4f58cbc3a09480bdccedde68fae2b78af60857a751f324e47caa80b63ba52c; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:59:15.330Z.