CEN12LA289 · Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
iPrerogative Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Albuquerque International Sunport (KABQ) to Page Municipal Airport (KPGA)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA289
- 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 Company R44 II
- 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
- N7523S
- Operator
- iPrerogative
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Albuquerque International Sunport (KABQ), Albuquerque, NMTo Page Municipal Airport (KPGA), Page, AZ
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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 (total)
- 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 power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter, which had been based at sea level, had recently been sold, and the flight instructor and a commercial pilot were flying it across the country to its new base. While in cruise flight over mountainous terrain at high density altitude, the flight instructor initiated a practice autorotation for the purpose of maintaining proficiency. During the autorotation, the engine stopped producing power. The instructor continued the autorotation to a landing; however, during the landing, the main rotor blades severed the tail boom. A postaccident engine run at high density altitude revealed that the engine ran rough at an idle power setting with a full rich fuel mixture. Leaning the fuel mixture improved engine performance. It is likely that the fuel control unit was set by maintenance personnel to provide a rich mixture at sea level, which resulted in poor engine performance at high density altitudes.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power due to an excessively rich fuel mixture that occurred during operations at idle power settings at a high density altitude. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor’s poor decision-making in choosing to practice an unnecessary autorotation over mountainous terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA289
- Event ID
- 20120511X40109
- Case number
- CEN12LA289
- 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: 43ce1b0d18b36745652e318960f1ed7edd983164b79f1d37efbd4aff1a53afd8; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:03:10.335Z.