ERA18LA161 · Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From GAC Waterfront Heliport (FD32) to Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport (BTR)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA161
- 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 Company R44 II
- Aircraft type
- Robinson R44
- 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
- N755KT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From GAC Waterfront Heliport (FD32), Navarre, FLTo Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport (BTR), Baton Rouge, LA
- 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
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was delivering the helicopter to a factory service center for troubleshooting of an engine-idle discrepancy that maintenance personnel could not resolve following a recent engine crankshaft overhaul and reinstallation. The pilot reported that the engine idled smoothly at engine start and that it initially accelerated smoothly and ran continuously without interruption. However, while the helicopter was at 100 knots and in cruise flight at 400 ft above a beach, the pilot felt "violent shaking," which he initially thought was turbulence. He then added aft cyclic, lowered the collective, scanned the instruments, and the shaking stopped. He then noted zero oil pressure, and the oil pressure light illuminated. The rotor rpm began decaying, so he entered an autorotation. Because people were on the beach, he selected an unoccupied area in the water for a forced landing, during which the tailboom separated.
Examination of the engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded the normal operation. Although the electrically operated auxiliary fuel pump was not functional during a postaccident test, the engine-driven mechanical fuel pump operated normally. Given that the mechanical fuel pump can sustain engine operation if the auxiliary fuel pump is inoperative, it is unlikely that a preaccident failure of the auxiliary fuel pump resulted in the partial loss of engine power. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined because postaccident engine examinations did not reveal any evidence of preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA161
- Event ID
- 20180609X02310
- Case number
- ERA18LA161
- 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: a8c30a481c4111e6b7c64f120daf1d8c85091dbb5fec12fdef7851167ab12074; retrieved 2026-09-16T07:24:25.873Z.