WPR11LA377 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Inland Helicopters Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Felts Field (SFF) to Deer Park Airport (DEW)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA377
- 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
- N8332T
- Operator
- Inland Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Felts Field (SFF), Spokane, WATo Deer Park Airport (DEW), Deer Park, WA
- 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 · hover
- 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 control in flight
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that this was the second training flight for the student. The student was practicing hovering and allowed the helicopter to drift right, and he began to lower the collective. The flight instructor announced repeatedly that he was taking the flight controls, but the student did not relinquish the controls. Control of the helicopter was momentarily lost, and it landed hard. The student said that, while hovering, the helicopter began turning to the right so he tried to correct with the left pedal. The student stated that he "overdid it with the pedal," and the helicopter spun to the left. He reported that the helicopter did "several 360's banking down and the left skid hit the ground," after which the instructor regained control and landed the helicopter hard in a grass field.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to maintain control of the helicopter and his delay in relinquishing control to the flight instructor, which resulted in the instructor’s delayed remedial actions and subsequent hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA377
- Event ID
- 20110811X51724
- Case number
- WPR11LA377
- 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: 2e90d9c1af6a8690a915fabe3698401a7ac51aa9e4e97d061e6fa6d3b99a5680; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:35:46.976Z.