WPR18LA130 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Aurora State Airport (UAO) to Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA130
- 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
- N7526S
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aurora State Airport (UAO), Aurora, ORTo Portland Hillsboro Airport (HIO), Portland, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 14 years (built 2004)
- 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
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
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 a visual flight rules personal flight in visual meteorological conditions. After cancelling flight following services with air traffic control, the helicopter impacted an open field under unknown circumstances. The pilot did not provide a statement regarding the events of the accident, and there were no witnesses. Postaccident airframe and engine examinations revealed no evidence of any preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. The upright orientation of the wreckage and impact damage to the fuselage and main rotor blades were consistent with a hard landing; however, the circumstances surrounding the accident and the reason for the hard landing could not be determined based on available evidence.
Probable cause
A hard landing for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA130
- Event ID
- 20180501X12617
- Case number
- WPR18LA130
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2018-05-02.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 97ed049126554f06efeb164548d8c883a091bd6edc997845ddaac6d8c4fa7b35; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:59:16.813Z.