GAA18CA030 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: hard landing during autorotation
From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT) to North Las Vegas Airport (VGT)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA030
- 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
- N878MC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), Las Vegas, NVTo North Las Vegas Airport (VGT), Las Vegas, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2005)
- 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
- Autorotation
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the training flight was to practice autorotations with power recovery. The flight instructor reported that, as the helicopter descended through about 40 ft, he instructed the student pilot to increase the landing flare and roll on throttle for power recovery. As the helicopter continued to quickly descend to about 8 ft, they raised the collective, and the flight instructor felt resistance in the collective. The rpms began to drag down, and he tried rolling on the throttle to bring the rpms back up. The flight instructor reported that he believed that the student had tensed up on the throttle and collective as he tried to keep the helicopter level and cushion for the landing.
The student pilot reported that, in hindsight, he was pulling up on the collective, but his hand (wrist) was locked, which prevented the governor to roll on and increase power.
The helicopter subsequently landed hard, which resulted in substantial damage the fuselage.
The flight instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation
Probable cause
The student pilot’s tension on the flight control at a low level during an autorotation, which did not allow sufficient time for the flight instructor to correct and recover control before the hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA030
- Event ID
- 20171030X60823
- Case number
- GAA18CA030
- 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: fdc81e2c76a40594baa13156455a88a5ae73b4d86b7cab58761d7872ccf29a32; retrieved 2026-09-16T05:58:24.902Z.