CEN11WA617 · Robinson R44
9049-5854 Quebec Robinson R44 · Accident: loss of control in flight during takeoff
From St. Ferdinand to St. Nicolas
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN11WA617
- 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
- 4 · 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 R44
- 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
- C-GEBY
- Operator
- 9049-5854 Quebec
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. FerdinandTo St. Nicolas
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
On August 27, 2011, at 2115 eastern daylight time, a Robinson R44 helicopter, C-GEBY, sustained substantial damage when it impacted terrain shortly after takeoff near St. Ferdinand, Quebec, Canada. The pilot and three passengers sustained fatal injuries.
The investigation is under the jurisdiction of the Government of Canada. Any further information may be obtained from:
Transportation Safety Board of Canada 200 Promenade du Portage Place du Centre, 4th Floor Hull, Quebec K1A 1K8 Canada
Web site: http://www.tsb.gc.ca
This report is for informational purposes only and contains only information released by or obtained for the Government of Canada.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN11WA617
- Event ID
- 20110906X02608
- Case number
- CEN11WA617
- 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: local date. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2011-08-28.
- API snapshot SHA-256: e0478064cc4f4bd2390c46c6b500958e6dbdc9fdba658d55a84bb46bc2f74b5c; retrieved 2026-09-13T21:47:51.617Z.