ERA22LA106 · Charles C Menger JR SAFARI 400
Charles C Menger JR SAFARI 400 · Accident: abrupt maneuver while taxiing
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA106
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
Charles C Menger JR SAFARI 400
- Aircraft type
- Charles C Menger JR SAFARI 400
- 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
- N32CM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2018)
- 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
- Taxi
- 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
- Abrupt maneuver
- 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 power plant
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, he was performing the first flight after a condition inspection. He put the helicopter into a hover, noted the “throttle locked up and [the helicopter] got away” from him. The helicopter rolled onto its side and impacted the ground, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage and tailboom. Furthermore, he reported an overspeed and “hard vibration” prior to the rollover. A post-accident examination of the helicopter revealed no evidence of any pre-accident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. In addition, the throttle governor was bench tested with no anomalies noted.
Probable cause
A reported stuck throttle for reasons that could not be determined during postaccident examinations and subsequent loss of control during hover.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA106
- Event ID
- 20220113104521
- Case number
- ERA22LA106
- 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: 28bfa0fd3d4338f9900e89d1b7adfd92c52a4320ad959326d86df1829f380248; retrieved 2026-09-16T14:53:22.470Z.