WPR13LA222 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Hawaii Pacific Aviation Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Honolulu, HI to Honolulu, HI
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA222
- 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
- N5ZK
- Operator
- Hawaii Pacific Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Honolulu, HITo Honolulu, 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, while he was maneuvering the helicopter about 3,000 feet above ground level (agl), the engine suddenly experienced a total loss of power, which was immediately followed by the activation of the low rotor rpm light and horn. In response to the engine failure, the pilot lowered the collective and entered an autorotation. She began to flare the helicopter at an altitude of about 40 feet agl. The helicopter touched down on a road and skidded into a parked automobile.
A postaccident examination of the helicopter revealed that the mixture cable had fracture-separated from the mixture bellcrank control arm located on the carburetor. The bellcrank was positioned near the idle/cutoff position, and the spring was inserted in the wrong direction. The helicopter airframe had undergone an overhaul about 16 hours of flight time before the accident, and, during that overhaul, a mechanic's apprentice installed the mixture hardware. The apprentice improperly rigged the mixture-to-bellcrank hardware, which prevented the mixture cable from moving freely. The repeated stress on the mixture cable resulted in it breaking after a number of operation cycles. When the failure occurred, the bellcrank spring, which is designed to force the mixture to the full-rich position, instead pulled the mixture to the idle/cutoff position, which cut off the fuel. The mechanic overseeing the apprentice reported that he did not visually observe the misrigging and that, if he had performed a tactile inspection, he would have detected the error.
Probable cause
The mechanic’s failure to properly inspect the helicopter following maintenance performed by an apprentice, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to the improper rigging of the mixture control assembly.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA222
- Event ID
- 20130509X00705
- Case number
- WPR13LA222
- 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 2013-05-09.
- API snapshot SHA-256: ff38dbdbfa2ad5988f05a98c792ea73131c88867f3dd968a917f463324babe4c; retrieved 2026-09-15T21:28:48.921Z.