ERA17CA099 · Robinson Helicopter R22 Beta
Middle River Aviation Robinson Helicopter R22 Beta · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Martin State Airport (MTN) to Fallston Airport (W42)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA17CA099
- 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
- N7518G
- Operator
- Middle River Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Martin State Airport (MTN), Middle River, MDTo Fallston Airport (W42), Fallston, MD
- Aircraft age
- About 11 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
- 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 › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The student pilot, who held a commercial fixed-wing pilot certificate, was performing hovering flight during his first helicopter lesson when the helicopter "suddenly jerked backwards." The helicopter's tail rotor gearbox and a portion of the tail rotor departed the helicopter, and the flight instructor landed the helicopter upright with no injuries to the two occupants.
According to the flight instructor, he monitored the cyclic, collective, and tail rotor controls while explaining hovering flight and surrendered each control to the student pilot one at a time until the student pilot was fully controlling the helicopter. As the helicopter transitioned backward and began a "spin to the left," he requested and took control of the helicopter, but the student pilot did not surrender the controls, and the flight instructor could not overpower the student pilot's inputs before the tail rotor collided with terrain. The flight instructor further stated that there were no mechanical deficiencies with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot's failure to relinquish the flight controls to the flight instructor, which resulted in a collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA17CA099
- Event ID
- 20170204X53753
- Case number
- ERA17CA099
- 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: 5ba292ca4e34cdc02068feff9866c160d38fe2e31ff5a91ad5f0de60a61179c8; retrieved 2026-09-16T04:59:33.806Z.