ENG15RA012 · Robinson R44 - II
Robinson R44 - II · Accident: aircraft structural failure en route
Event
- NTSB case
- ENG15RA012
- 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
- Unknown · led by another country; figures from NTSB notifications
- 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
- Unknown
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Not recorded
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
- ZK-HPC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- 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
- Not recorded
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Aircraft structural failure
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Not plotted · Location withheld: coordinates are missing, conflicting, invalid, or have no accepted acquisition method. No substitute location has been invented.
NTSB narrative
On January 23, 2015, a Robinson R44 II experienced a severe in-flight vibration, after which the pilot successfully landed the helicopter. A subsequent inspection found a crack on one of the main rotor blades. This incident is being investigated by the New Zealand Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) and the NTSB is participating as the United States Accredited Representative to the New Zealand TAIC as the State of Design and State of Manufacture of the helicopter. For additional information, contact the New Zealand TAIC at:
Transport Accident Investigation Commission Level 16 AXA Centre 80 The Terrace P.O. Box 10323 The Terrace Wellington 6143 New Zealand
Tel.: (64) 4-473-0199 E-mail: inquiries@taic.org.nz Fax: (64) 4-499-1510 Website: http://www.taic.org.nz
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ENG15RA012
- Event ID
- 20150224X70026
- Case number
- ENG15RA012
- 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.
- No bulk values were replaced by the NTSB case API.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 4af77f6e26791805e99e68588632a47648f4e9331d882b7a8caecac60039a3ea; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:06:17.199Z.