GAA16CA530 · Robinson R22 BETA
Robinson R22 BETA · Accident: hard landing
From Austin Executive Airport (EDC) to Taylor Municipal Airport (T74)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA16CA530
- 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
- N1777V
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Austin Executive Airport (EDC), Austin, TXTo Taylor Municipal Airport (T74), Taylor, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 29 years (built 1987)
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 flight instructor reported that he and the student pilot were both on the controls. When the helicopter was about 10 ft above ground level (agl), the instructor initiated a simulated engine failure autorotation with a power recovery. As they rolled the engine throttle up to recover, the alternator light illuminated, and the engine lost all power. When the helicopter was about 2 ft agl, the instructor raised full collective and leveled the helicopter, and the low rotor rpm light and horn activated. The student stated that the engine might have had a low-idle setting and that, during the accident flight, he applied full carburetor heat. The helicopter landed hard, bounced, and settled back onto the runway, and the main rotor blade struck the tailboom. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the tailboom. The instructor reported that, during a postaccident engine test-run, the engine started and ran without any issues. A Federal Aviation Administration inspector reported that, due to the accident occurring more than 3 years before it was reported by an anonymous person, he was not able to determine the reason for the loss of engine power.
Probable cause
The flight instructor's improper collective input during a simulated engine failure autorotation with a power recovery, which resulted in a hard, bounced landing and the main rotor blade striking the tailboom.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA16CA530
- Event ID
- 20191003X74128
- Case number
- GAA16CA530
- 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: 763bab724852e390c7a77308f6a95f3c311b6d291f464c903c5d2a9cb80960cc; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:16:49.511Z.