WPR12LA362 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Utah Helicopter Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: hard landing
From U77 · Spanish Fork, UT to U77 · Spanish Fork, UT
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR12LA362
- 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 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
- N208WM
- Operator
- Utah Helicopter
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From U77 · Spanish Fork, UTTo U77 · Spanish Fork, UT
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and student pilot were on a local training flight to practice autorotations. The flight instructor reported that the student entered a 180-degree autorotation at an altitude of about 5,200 feet mean sea level at 65 knots. The student started the maneuver by initiating a descending "hard" right turn. Shortly after, the low rotor light illuminated, and the low rotor horn sounded. In response, the flight instructor assisted the student through the maneuver, and they added left cyclic and decreased the airspeed and sink rate. Although the rpm horn stopped, the helicopter's sink rate was excessive, so the flight instructor took control of the helicopter. He reported that the rotor seemed as if it was not responding to inputs and that the helicopter's sink rate was "pretty fast." The helicopter lost considerable altitude in the turn, and the flight instructor rolled on the throttle and flared in the short amount of distance between the helicopter and the ground. The helicopter subsequently touched down hard and rolled over. The flight instructor reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s delayed remedial action and inadequate supervision during a practice autorotation, which resulted in a hard landing and rollover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR12LA362
- Event ID
- 20120818X44210
- Case number
- WPR12LA362
- 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, coordinates. 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: 816c4ddc69629b636b6dee8107ca301229cb9264bbbda6a9acde3967e327ffd8; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:25:24.230Z.