GAA15CA032 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: settling with power/vortex ring state while maneuvering
From Fort Davis, TX to Fort Davis, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15CA032
- 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 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
- N8363D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Davis, TXTo Fort Davis, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 18 years (built 1997)
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Settling with power/vortex ring state
- 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
The pilot stated he was positioning the helicopter to have the sole passenger take a photograph of an animal and a settling with power condition occurred. The pilot stated that a gust of wind came from a nearby hill and began to push the helicopter toward the ground so the pilot conducted a running landing to an open field. During the landing, the pilot reported that the helicopter struck an anthill and rolled sideways. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the tail boom.
The pilot verified that there were no pre-impact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the helicopter during flight, which resulted in the helicopter impacting terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15CA032
- Event ID
- 20150403X70210
- Case number
- GAA15CA032
- 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: 89ffbc77354b9ecb7538e9ce5480000e806bd736d4636ee464c604020d020cbc; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:12:24.387Z.