CEN15LA375 · Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
Perfect Filler Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II · Accident: loss of tail rotor effectiveness while maneuvering
From Coulter Field (CFD) to Coulter Field (CFD)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN15LA375
- 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
- N445HS
- Operator
- Perfect Filler
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Coulter Field (CFD), Bryan, TXTo Coulter Field (CFD), Bryan, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 3 years (built 2012)
- 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 · hover
- 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 tail rotor effectiveness
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting the flight behind another helicopter in order to film the passengers on board the lead helicopter hunting wild hog. At the filming location, the accident pilot initially established a hover about 400 ft above ground level (agl). After the lead pilot radioed to the accident pilot that he was flying too high, the accident pilot descended to about 200 ft agl, which was 100 ft above the lead helicopter. The accident pilot made a right pedal turn away from a headwind of 20 knots in an attempt to keep the lead helicopter in sight. The accident helicopter subsequently entered a right descending spin, which the pilot was unable to arrest. The helicopter subsequently impacted trees, which damaged the main rotor, tail rotor, and fuselage.
Examination of the helicopter revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The helicopter was operating in a high-power, low-airspeed condition that required the pilot to be especially aware of wind direction to avoid tailwinds, which can result in a loss of control due to a loss of tail rotor effectiveness. The combination of an out-of-ground-effect hover and the pilot's subsequent turn away from the headwind toward a tailwind of about 20 knots resulted in the loss of tail rotor effectiveness.
The flight was the accident pilot's first commercial operation and also the first flight that required him to maintain a hover while close to another helicopter. Neither the accident pilot nor the lead pilot was aware of the helicopter manufacturer's safety notice regarding photo flights, which recommended that pilots flying such operations should have a higher level of experience than the accident pilot had. The lead pilot, who was more experienced, reported that he was concerned about the accident pilot's inexperience relative to the challenging flight but chose to continue with the flight because he wanted to capture the film footage.
Probable cause
The pilot’s improper decision to turn the helicopter toward a tailwind during an out-of-ground-effect hover, which resulted in a loss of tail rotor effectiveness. Contributing to the accident was the accident and lead pilots’ inadequate preflight risk management.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN15LA375
- Event ID
- 20150823X74316
- Case number
- CEN15LA375
- 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, coordinates. 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: 7ede43afbee42d4f96e524f1603a52b48b99058af9e5ec647f13e4d2667c5b12; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:42:21.371Z.