CEN14LA517 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Ded Aviation Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) during autorotation
From Cahokia, IL to St Louis Downtown Airport (CPS)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN14LA517
- 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
- N115DD
- Operator
- Ded Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cahokia, ILTo St Louis Downtown Airport (CPS), Cahokia, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 11 years (built 2003)
- 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
- Autorotation
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that the helicopter's clutch warning light illuminated shortly after departure, which he did not think was abnormal because, when the belts heat up and re-tension, it causes the light to briefly illuminate; this was corroborated by the Pilot's Operating Handbook (POH). He continued the takeoff and then watched to see if the light would go out in 10 seconds. However, the POH stated that a pilot should never take off before the clutch warning light goes out. The light did not turn off, so he pulled the clutch circuit breaker and chose to land immediately in a parking lot. After landing, the pilot locked the controls, got out of the helicopter, and looked inside the engine compartment, but he did not see anything abnormal. The pilot said that he did not feel safe in his surroundings, so he chose to get back in the helicopter and make the short flight back to the airport. The pilot then departed and was about 500 yards from landing at the airport when the helicopter began to vibrate and make noise. The pilot initiated an autorotation, but, as he slowed and flared the helicopter, it yawed left as he pulled on the collective. The skids contacted and then dug into the soft ground, and the main rotor blades severed the tail boom. It is likely that the accident could have been prevented if the pilot had not taken off after the clutch warning light illuminated or if he had turned back and landed at the airport after the warning light did not extinguish.
A postaccident examination of the helicopter's fan assembly, including the lower sheave and lower actuator bearing, revealed no evidence of lubrication and heat damage, consistent with a lack of lubrication. The helicopter had undergone an annual inspection about 9.1 hours before the accident. Although the mechanic who performed the last annual inspection made an entry in the engine logbook that he lubricated the lower actuator bearing, it is likely that he did not perform that task given the lack of lubrication on the bearing.
Probable cause
The pilot’s poor decision to take off with the clutch warning light illuminated, which resulted in the total failure of the fan assembly due to a lack of lubrication. Contributing to the accident was the mechanic’s failure to lubricate the lower actuator bearing at the last annual inspection.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN14LA517
- Event ID
- 20140923X41257
- Case number
- CEN14LA517
- 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: 1e1883fc67b1b55548366e34c01c74a7460244902ae5f31a6e65332ee4c8b8f4; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:47:47.691Z.