CEN12WA268 · Robinson
General aviation Robinson · Accident: collision during takeoff/landing during initial climb
From Wuppertal-Lange to Unbek
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination and operator. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12WA268
- 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
- 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
- Category
- Helicopter · from aircraft type
- 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
- D-HARV
- Operator
- General Aviation Narrative disagrees
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From Wuppertal-LangeTo Unbek
- 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Collision during takeoff/landing
- 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 April 28, 2012, at 1650 coordinated universal time, a Robinson R44 helicopter, D-HARV, impacted terrain near Wuppertal-Langerfeld, Germany. The pilot and 3 passengers sustained minor injuries. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed for the flight.
The accident investigation is under the jurisdiction and control of the German government. This report is for information purposes only. Further information pertaining to this accident may be obtained from:
German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Investigation Bundesstelle fuer Flugunfalluntersuchung (BFU) Hermann-Blenk Strasse 16 38108 Braunschweig Germany
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12WA268
- Event ID
- 20120503X03455
- Case number
- CEN12WA268
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f0b9953f7f6f8590bb240d89af92e9106091cc2cff8ae963935b816a973ec53f; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:58:28.794Z.