CEN14CA223 · Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
Eid-Co Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Poplar Bluff Municipal Airport (POF) to Roosterville Airport (0N0)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14CA223
- 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
- 0
- 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
- N32VB
- Operator
- Eid-Co
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Poplar Bluff Municipal Airport (POF), Poplar Bluff, MOTo Roosterville Airport (0N0), Liberty, MO
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2005)
- 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
- 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
Upon arrival at the destination airport, the pilot hovered the helicopter about 2 feet above the ground and prepared to land. The pilot noted that during the hover while the nose of the helicopter was pointed east, the wind shifted direction and gusted from the west. The helicopter's tail section raised and the nose lowered, which allowed the main rotor blades to strike the ground. The helicopter rolled over on its left side and sustained substantial damage to the main rotor blades and fuselage. The Federal Aviation Administration inspector responded to the scene; an examination of the helicopter was conducted and did not reveal any evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The pilot noted that if he had kept the helicopter's nose pointed into the wind then the accident might not have occurred.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain directional control while operating in gusty wind conditions at a low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14CA223
- Event ID
- 20140428X65725
- Case number
- CEN14CA223
- 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: 6e278d9bf3b977937f0a04b9c858c067034d705dfc7eaed9559227cfbd5989b0; retrieved 2026-09-15T23:32:53.240Z.