ERA11WA276 · Robinson R22
Robinson R22 · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) en route
From Corchiano (no airport) to Sulmona (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA11WA276
- 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
- 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
- Not recorded
Robinson R22
- 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
- I-ETEC
- Operator
- Elicompany
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Corchiano (no airport)To Sulmona (no airport)
- 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., Non-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
- En route
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On April 26, 2011, at 1743 coordinated universal time (1843 local time), a Robinson R22, Italian registration I-ETEC, was destroyed when it impacted power lines near Sulmona, L'Aquila, Italy. The pilot and the observer were fatally injured. The flight, which departed an airstrip in Corchiano, Lazio, Italy, destined for a helipad in Sulmona, was operating under Italian flight regulations.
According to Italian authorities, the crew was inspecting pipelines in a mountainous area when the helicopter hit the power lines, then impacted the ground.
The accident investigation is under the jurisdiction of the government of Italy. Further information may be obtained from:
Agenzia Nazionale per la Sicurrezza del Volo (ANSV) Via Attilio Benigni, 53 00156 Roma, Italia Phone: (39) 06 8207 8219 Fax: (39) 06 8273 672 Safety.info@ansv.it
This report is for informational purposes, and only contains information released by the government of Italy.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA11WA276
- Event ID
- 20110503X02028
- Case number
- ERA11WA276
- 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: 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: 975b4dd0843bf390cdea3f1fc25b75f86e52192704bbcda5af8df1de19890fea; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:22:47.698Z.