GAA18CA483 · Robinson R22 BETA
Robinson R22 BETA · Accident while maneuvering
From Ocean City Municipal Airport (26N) to Ocean City Municipal Airport (26N)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA18CA483
- 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 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
- N92TR
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Ocean City Municipal Airport (26N), Ocean City, NJTo Ocean City Municipal Airport (26N), Ocean City, NJ
- Aircraft age
- About 25 years (built 1993)
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor in the skid-equipped helicopter reported that, during hover practice, he transferred the flight controls to the student while the helicopter was hovering about 3 ft above ground level (agl). He added that he should have started the hover practice at 5 ft agl, which was the normal procedure. Shortly after, the hover became unstable, and the instructor took the flight controls, but he was not able to regain control of the helicopter. The left skid contacted the ground, and the helicopter rolled onto its side.
The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the tailboom and vertical stabilizer.
The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's decision to conduct hover practice at a lower altitude than recommended and his delayed remedial action during recovery from an unstable hover, which resulted in a dynamic rollover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA18CA483
- Event ID
- 20180810X14143
- Case number
- GAA18CA483
- 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: 4f11eebb581e80ccccd0de8f4c5d97235300275234db28f6d601e2d22932ea81; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:04:22.747Z.