CEN20LA136 · Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
Ride the Sky Helicopters Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II · Accident: controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT) while maneuvering
From Arthur N Neu Airport (CIN) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20LA136
- 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
- 2 · 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 Helicopter Company 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
- N107EH
- Operator
- Ride the Sky Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Arthur N Neu Airport (CIN), Carroll, IATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 16 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
- 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
- Controlled flight into terrain/object (CFIT)
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Physical
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot and passenger were conducting a low-altitude raptor survey flight. Witnesses reported seeing the helicopter flying just prior to its impact with powerlines about 85 ft above the ground. The witnesses described the helicopter in a gentle turn toward the sun prior to impact. One witness noted that he did not hear any unusual noises from the helicopter prior to impact.
Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast data from the helicopter provided information indicating the pilot flew six flights in the 24 hours prior to the accident. The accident flight was the fifth that day and occurred approximately 10 hours after the pilot had begun flying that morning. Intervals between flights that day were 17, 24, 35, and 29 minutes.
These working conditions were conducive to fatigue. Research on pilot fatigue in a noisy, vibrating helicopter simulator found considerable increases in subjective fatigue after 6 hours of short repetitive flights. At the end of this period, some helicopter pilots who participated in the study said they were so fatigued that they did not feel safe to fly a real helicopter. As subjective fatigue increased, study pilots demonstrated increasingly frequent “lapses” in performance.
While missions the day of the accident were longer than those in the study, flights were conducted at low altitude and involved repetitive observation tasks that required a high state of awareness to avoid terrain and obstacles. This heightened state of awareness would produce a mental workload similar to the shorter repetitive IFR flights in the study; therefore, it is likely that similar effects would be expected, including lapses in performance as fatigue increased. These lapses in performance were described in the study as outliers caused by moments of inattention. The accident pilot’s ability to avoid the same wire nine times earlier that day, but not avoid it during the accident flight is consistent with an attentional “lapse.” This potential lapse combined with over 10 hours since awakening, and 8 hours flight time already accumulated the day of the accident suggests that the pilot was likely fatigued during the accident flight and that fatigue likely challenged the pilot’s ability to see and avoid the power line.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to recognize and avoid the power line during the low-altitude flight. Contributing to the accident was the pilot’s fatigue, which affected the pilot’s ability to see and avoid the power line.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20LA136
- Event ID
- 20200401X81511
- Case number
- CEN20LA136
- 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, cause areas. 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: 1fdda51c8673c7c9d872f805db99591db440183416cdd7362e2b71b93f5c491c; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:13:20.294Z.