CEN15LA198 · Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) en route
From Greater Kankakee Airport (IKK) to Pekin Municipal Airport (C15)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA198
- 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 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
- N754R
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greater Kankakee Airport (IKK), Kankakee, ILTo Pekin Municipal Airport (C15), Pekin, IL
- Aircraft age
- About 9 years (built 2006)
- 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
- En route · climb to cruise
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot stated he and the passenger were conducting a helicopter flight to observe and count geese at an altitude of 300 ft above the ground at an indicated airspeed of 60 knots. The pilot increased the collective to transition to another area when he noticed an increase in engine rpm and a decrease in rotor rpm along with the illumination of a main rotor warning light. The clutch warning light did not illuminate. The pilot initiated a downwind autorotation to a plowed field. The helicopter tipped forward on its skids, the main rotor contacted the ground, and the helicopter rolled over. Although a postaccident examination of the clutch and V-belts revealed some limited component wear, and some minor anomalies to the best tension actuator were noted, no anomalies were identified with the clutch system that would have resulted in a loss of main rotor rpm.
Probable cause
A loss of main rotor rpm for reasons that could not be determined during postaccident examinations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA198
- Event ID
- 20150416X53304
- Case number
- CEN15LA198
- 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: 7f51cf23ce15717ac48e2eb3adf6c0210f4d5c1fd44c239df712dd4da246dbb2; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:14:01.775Z.