GAA15CA200 · Robinson Helicopter R-22
M.I. Air Corportation Robinson Helicopter R-22 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Corona Municipal Airport (AJO) to Corona Municipal Airport (AJO)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15CA200
- 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 R-22
- Aircraft type
- Robinson R-22
- 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
- N520NS
- Operator
- M.I. Air Corportation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Corona Municipal Airport (AJO), Corona, CATo Corona Municipal Airport (AJO), Corona, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2011)
- 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
- 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 on ground
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During a local instructional flight, the student pilot was at the flight controls during the second landing of the flight. The flight instructor reported that he began correcting the yaw rate for the student pilot in the landing flare. As the helicopter entered ground effect, the flight instructor reported that he was able to align the skids with the direction of travel, but they touched down with considerable forward momentum. During the running landing, the left skid caught rough terrain and rolled the helicopter to left. The main rotor blades impacted the terrain and stopped the helicopter from rolling over. The helicopter's pitch control linkages were substantially damaged.
The flight instructor stated that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's delayed remedial action to arrest the descent rate, which resulted in a running landing, the left skid catching rough terrain, and the main rotor blades impacting the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15CA200
- Event ID
- 20150727X40532
- Case number
- GAA15CA200
- 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: 02ab2bb807a9d58b8fd321cf16637015ecf93aefc97d66e0e0bae9b4f4f8f9a8; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:34:55.591Z.