CEN12LA325 · Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
Green Aircraft Leasing Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II · Accident: loss of control in flight while taxiing
From Mount Hawley Auxiliary Airport (3MY) to Joliet, IL (private airstrip)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12LA325
- 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
- N1UB
- Operator
- Green Aircraft Leasing
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mount Hawley Auxiliary Airport (3MY), Peoria, ILTo Joliet, IL (private airstrip)
- 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
- Taxi · to runway
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that he was repositioning the helicopter from the ramp area to a taxiway from where he intended to depart. He stated that after hover-taxiing about 30 yards to the east-northeast he made a left turn toward the north. He reported that, during this turn, the helicopter encountered a wind gust that elevated the tail boom to the point where the forward portion of the landing skids made contact with the tarmac. The helicopter landed hard after the pilot lowered the collective in response to the loss of control. The tail boom, tail rotor, and main rotor impacted the tarmac during the hard landing. The pilot reported that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation of the helicopter. A postaccident review of the available weather reports established that the prevailing wind was from 190 degrees at 5 knots. No wind gusts were reported during the 1-hour time period surrounding the accident. In the absence of any appreciable wind gusts, the pilot should have been able to maintain control of the helicopter while hover-taxiing.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of control while hover-taxiing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12LA325
- Event ID
- 20120529X40323
- Case number
- CEN12LA325
- 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: a719fa7426ec70c4e344437847654ae8e3009aff52d74961a9f740d672f51e0b; retrieved 2026-09-15T18:18:00.449Z.