GAA20CA035 · Robinson R22 BETA
California Aviation Services Robinson R22 BETA · Accident: hard landing
From Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP) to Perkins Field (U08)
Event
- NTSB case
- GAA20CA035
- 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
- N4066S
- Operator
- California Aviation Services
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Laughlin Bullhead International Airport (IFP), Bullhead City, AZTo Perkins Field (U08), Overton, NV
- Aircraft age
- About 29 years (built 1990)
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that he told the pilot receiving instruction in the helicopter to shoot an approach to a sandbar in a riverbed. The pilot approached to the south, and the wind was between about 20 to 25 knots from the south. About 20 ft above ground level, the instructor took the flight controls due to a steep and fast approach and initiated a go-around. He performed a climbing left turn to the north, and subsequently the helicopter descended, and he was unable to maneuver it into the wind. The helicopter landed hard, bounced, and yawed right. The helicopter contacted the ground again and rolled onto its left side. The main rotor blades struck the ground, and the tailboom separated. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the tailboom. The instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain a proper approach and the flight instructor's subsequent failure to maintain an adequate climb rate during an attempted go-around in gusting tailwind conditions, which resulted in a hard landing and dynamic rollover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record GAA20CA035
- Event ID
- 20191018X35916
- Case number
- GAA20CA035
- 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: 3c0cb184b5e87b2b6e989dbc79db33104bdbb8e8139584c1cd41554e11c5a1df; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:25:20.046Z.