WPR19TA131 · Robinson R22 BETA
Garden State Helicopters Robinson R22 BETA · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Lincoln Park Airport (N07) to Lincoln Park Airport (N07)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR19TA131
- 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
- N7532R
- Operator
- Garden State Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lincoln Park Airport (N07), Lincoln Park, NJTo Lincoln Park Airport (N07), Lincoln Park, NJ
- Aircraft age
- About 15 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 · 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
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor was conducting an introductory flight with the student pilot. After an approximate 40-minute flight, with the helicopter in a stable hover about 5 to 10 ft above ground level, the instructor initiated a hover taxi to the parking area. The instructor recalled that he heard the low rotor rpm warning horn sound, and the helicopter simultaneously began a violent yaw to the right while the nose pitched up. The instructor further stated that he immediately attempted to regain control by rolling the throttle to idle to arrest the yaw. Despite his efforts, the tail rotor impacted the ground, and the helicopter began to spin more rapidly, completing numerous 360° rotations. The helicopter came to rest on its right side. Examination of the helicopter revealed no evidence of mechanical malfunction or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The circumstances of the accident are consistent with the instructor’s failure to maintain yaw control while transitioning to forward flight.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's failure to maintain control of the helicopter while transitioning from a hover to forward flight, which resulted in a loss of control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR19TA131
- Event ID
- 20190502X65346
- Case number
- WPR19TA131
- 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: 422f6b5fe5b8ba483655d226dd4162b0cd1b0c16c7ab2acb0659f78d1485a4b5; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:52:14.419Z.