WPR12LA195 · Robinson R22 BETA
Hawaii Pacific Aviation Robinson R22 BETA · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) during autorotation
From HKO · Kailua-Kona, HI to HKO · Kailua-Kona, HI
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA195
- 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 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
- N209KR
- Operator
- Hawaii Pacific Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From HKO · Kailua-Kona, HITo HKO · Kailua-Kona, HI
- 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
- Autorotation
- 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 (partial)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While the student pilot was maneuvering for a practice off-field landing, the flight instructor observed that it was starting to drizzle, so he instructed the student to apply carburetor heat, which he did. As the student was continuing to maneuver for the approach to landing, the instructor detected a loss of engine power. The flight instructor immediately took control of the helicopter, rolled the throttle off and on to recover the loss of rotor rpm, and subsequently instructed the student to try to restart the engine while he set up an emergency landing. The student attempted three engine restarts, each of which was unsuccessful. The flight instructor then performed an emergency autorotation to upsloping terrain, which resulted in a hard landing and substantial damage to the helicopter. The instructor stated that the engine was running at idle after the landing. A postaccident examination of the engine and a subsequent engine run revealed no operational difficulties that would have precluded normal operation. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power while maneuvering for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident examination of the engine did not reveal any anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA195
- Event ID
- 20120505X62306
- Case number
- WPR12LA195
- 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, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2012-05-03.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 70593e85cf504205e545b67dd1e26ed885747c7a4199ab64b11d3337139dff3e; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:00:06.284Z.