GAA15CA238 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Helicopter Flight Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP) to Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA15CA238
- 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 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
- N86EH
- Operator
- Helicopter Flight
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP), Ronkonkoma, NYTo Long Island MacArthur Airport (ISP), Ronkonkoma, NY
- Aircraft age
- About 29 years (built 1986)
- 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 control in flight
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that he had given instructions to the student pilot to hover over a grass area on the airport property. The flight instructor stated the helicopter was "hovering 18 inches to 30 inches above the ground and then was lying on its side on the ground". The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the main rotor, tail boom, and tail rotor drive shaft.
In a statement to the FAA, the flight instructor said he had given the controls to the student pilot. The student pilot started to over control the helicopter and it went into a pendulum motion. The helicopter came close to the ground and the right skid made contact with the ground, causing a dynamic rollover.
The flight instructor reported no preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions with the airframe or engine that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot's loss of control during a hover, which resulted in ground contact and a dynamic rollover. Contributing to the accident was the flight instructor's lack of action to remediate the student pilot's control inputs and recover aircraft control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA15CA238
- Event ID
- 20150827X20826
- Case number
- GAA15CA238
- 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: 73cb6c9e2b866ae8900f7f726fba97eee1f2c275e13d06dad2c68812a734853d; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:43:10.427Z.