ERA19TA204 · Robinson R44 II
Ali Robinson R44 II · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Elgon, WV to Elgon, WV
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA19TA204
- 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
- 0
- 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 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
- N883TY
- Operator
- Ali
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Elgon, WVTo Elgon, WV
- Aircraft age
- About 5 years (built 2014)
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and two passengers were on a sightseeing flight. The helicopter entered a river basin that the pilot had previously flown through and rounded a bend. The pilot then saw unmarked wires that spanned the riverand tried to fly under the wires; however, the helicopter's main rotor struck the lowest wire. The helicopter then descended and came to rest on its right side in the river. The wires were about 50 ft above the river and were not depicted on the visual flight rules sectional chart. The pilot said that he had not previously noticed the wires but that he was flying at a lower altitude than on previous flights and "was too low in a place I shouldn't have been." The pilot stated that there were no mechanical malfunctions or failures with the airplane that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's decision to maneuver the helicopter at low altitude over a river, which resulted in a wire strike and subsequent collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA19TA204
- Event ID
- 20190630X20833
- Case number
- ERA19TA204
- 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: 3c7f3839b5a3f30fc35b118e39a179e0a0c8d816e1352401564e30b69813cdc2; retrieved 2026-09-16T09:20:34.441Z.