WPR11CA189 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Upper Limit Aviation Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: loss of engine power (total) on approach
From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) to U42 · Salt Lake City, UT
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11CA189
- 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
- N268SH
- Operator
- Upper Limit Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC), Salt Lake City, UTTo U42 · Salt Lake City, UT
- 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
- Approach · VFR pattern downwind
- 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 engine power (total)
- 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 power plant
- 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 certified flight instructor said he and his student were flying the helicopter in the traffic pattern on the downwind leg. The student pilot was flying and the instructor told him to reduce the power to begin the descent for the base turn to final. The student reduced the power by approximately 1 inch of manifold pressure. The instructor then took control of the helicopter and reduced the power by an additional 6 or 7 inches of manifold pressure. He said that the student pulled the mixture control out to the idle cutoff position, which resulted in a loss of engine power. The student had intended to apply carburetor heat and instead inadvertently moved the mixture control, which was located next to the carburetor heat. The instructor turned the helicopter 180 degrees into the wind and simultaneously entered an autorotation from 300 feet above the ground. His selected landing site turned out to be a school yard with children present. He maneuvered the helicopter to a new landing site, but subsequently landed hard. The landing skids were spread and the main rotor cut off the tail boom.
Probable cause
The student pilot's inadvertent action of pulling out the engine's mixture control lever to idle cutoff that resulted in a complete loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11CA189
- Event ID
- 20110406X23122
- Case number
- WPR11CA189
- 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: de173ef31f6ba0d0bff26ed2403cb79b9e728360e05235909b890b8117fb240f; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:00:51.044Z.