WPR16FA130 · Robinson Helicopter Co R66
Robinson Helicopter Co R66 · Accident: mast bumping en route
From Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC) to Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR16FA130
- 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
- 2 · 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 Co R66
- Aircraft type
- Robinson R66
- 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
- N117TW
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Prescott Regional Airport - Ernest A. Love Field (PRC), Prescott, AZTo Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL), Riverside, CA
- Aircraft age
- About 5 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
- En route · 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
- Mast bumping
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft propeller/rotor
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, not marked as estimated; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot and the pilot-rated passenger departed on a cross-country positioning flight. The helicopter was reported overdue when it did not arrive at the destination, and the wreckage was located the following morning. There were no witnesses to the accident, no recorded radar data, and no recorded radio transmissions from the pilot.
Examination of the wreckage revealed no evidence of any preexisting anomalies that would have precluded normal operation of the helicopter. There was evidence that a mast bumping event had occurred and that the main rotor blades had contacted the airframe, which resulted in an in-flight break-up. There was no recorded information available that could be used to determine the helicopter's airspeed, altitude, or the pilot's control inputs.
A weather study indicated that conditions were conducive to the development of significant updrafts or thermals of rising air and dust devils, and people near the accident site reported that there were numerous dust devils in the area.
It is likely that the helicopter encountered turbulence due to updrafts and/or dust devils, and the pilot lost control of the helicopter, which resulted in mast bumping.
Probable cause
An encounter with turbulence due to updrafts and/or dust devils that resulted in mast bumping and an in-flight break-up.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR16FA130
- Event ID
- 20160624X83720
- Case number
- WPR16FA130
- 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: bb363c73dd92de2083288b70668d52cfd6a046510804ae9aea4266636f9d12c3; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:51:50.731Z.