WPR13LA217 · Robinson R44 II
Leading Edge Aviation Robinson R44 II · Accident: loss of lift during takeoff
From Pomeroy, WA to Pomeroy, WA
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA217
- 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 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
- N442RN
- Operator
- Leading Edge Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Pomeroy, WATo Pomeroy, WA
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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 lift
- 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
Before the agricultural application flight, the pilot asked the ground crewman to refill the spray tank with 50 gallons of chemical solution; 10 gallons of aviation fuel was also added. Subsequently, the ground crewman signaled to the pilot that the helicopter was ready to depart. During the departure and while transitioning to forward flight, the low-rotor rpm horn activated, and the pilot immediately pushed the emergency dump button to lighten the load; however, the rpm continued to decrease, and the pilot initiated a run-on landing to a field. During the landing, the pilot was unable to maintain control as the left skid dug into the dirt, which resulted in the helicopter nosing over and coming to rest on its left side.
The pilot reported that he believed the amount of solution added to the tank was more than 50 gallons, which placed the helicopter outside of weight and balance and performance limitations. The pilot added that the spray tank sight glass is long and very shallow, and that, unless the helicopter is level, the sight glass reading is inaccurate. Additionally, when seated in the helicopter, it was not possible for the pilot to see the spray tank sight glass or know how much spray solution had been loaded into the tank. Therefore, the pilot had to rely either on the ground crewman or exit the helicopter after each load and visually check the load to ensure that the helicopter was loaded with the proper amount of chemical solution. The pilot reported no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to ensure that the helicopter was properly loaded, which resulted in the helicopter being in excess of its maximum allowable gross weight and led to a loss of main rotor rpm on takeoff. Contributing to the accident were the ground crewman's inadvertent overloading of the helicopter and the design of the spray tank's visual sight glass, which did not allow the pilot to visually verify the amount of the spray tank load without exiting the helicopter.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA217
- Event ID
- 20130505X43742
- Case number
- WPR13LA217
- 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: 24b86c1739144d6c2ed4ec2385497882625994de53d67c02d3b04360ebbc07e4; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:24:57.865Z.