ERA20LA310 · Robinson R22 MARINER
Robinson R22 MARINER · Accident during takeoff
From Page Field (FMY) to Page Field (FMY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20LA310
- 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 MARINER
- 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
- N194HC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Page Field (FMY), Fort Myers, FLTo Page Field (FMY), Fort Myers, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 29 years (built 1991)
- 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
- Takeoff
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 propeller/rotor
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and pilot receiving instruction had just started the helicopter when, as the engine accelerated to near its operating rpm, both pilots heard a loud “bang.” The pilot receiving instruction leaned out his door and announced that “the tail was hanging off the back of the aircraft.” The pilots shut down the helicopter and reported the event to the helicopter’s owner and his mechanic.
Examination of the tailrotor driveshaft, tailrotor gearbox, tailrotor blades, and the tailcone section forward of the tailrotor gearbox all revealed signatures consistent with overstress fracture on the fracture surfaces. There was no evidence of fatigue or foreign object damage (FOD). The fractures and impact signatures were consistent with the fracture of the tailrotor gearbox mount structure (bulkhead) of the tailcone, followed by impact signatures of the rotating tailrotor assembly against the vertical and horizontal stabilizers.
The impact signatures were consistent with a soft-bodied object (such as a plastic shopping bag or Mylar balloon) striking the turning tailrotor, which resulted in sudden-stoppage and overstress fractures of the tailrotor gearbox mount and the associated parts of the tailrotor assembly.
Probable cause
Foreign object damage of the turning tailrotor by a soft-bodied object, which resulted in the sudden stoppage of the tailrotor and the catastrophic failure of the tailrotor assembly and its mount structure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20LA310
- Event ID
- 20200909X14532
- Case number
- ERA20LA310
- 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: 86f290b988738054f3652968060a4f32fb5e982fd8c1809e02e6cae58e47f73d; retrieved 2026-09-16T13:00:55.119Z.