GAA18CA450 · Robinson R44 Undesignat
Airmen Testing And Training Inc Dba Robinson R44 Undesignat · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA) to Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA450
- 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 R44 Undesignat
- 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
- N479AT
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA), Lantana, FLTo Palm Beach County Park Airport (LNA), Lantana, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 11 years (built 2007)
- 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
- Landing
- 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 › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter instructor reported that, during the approach to land, about 5 ft above the ground, the student pilot overcorrected and moved the cyclic "back hard and slightly right." The right rear skid contacted the ground, and the helicopter rolled to the right. The main rotor blades struck the ground, and the helicopter came to rest on its right side.
The student reported that he believed the skid strike and unusual attitude were caused by his inexperience.
The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the main rotor blades, the fuselage, and the tailboom.
The flight instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s improper pitch control during landing, which resulted in a dynamic rollover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA450
- Event ID
- 20180729X63909
- Case number
- GAA18CA450
- 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: 8cdea334d12e1c0a977e27a3846b56f4b205ac169add671bfeabb68c4fe731d1; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:01:30.175Z.