ANC22FA030 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Quantum Helicopters Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Chandler Municipal Airport (CHD) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC22FA030
- 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
- 1 · 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 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
- N7516G
- Operator
- Quantum Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Chandler Municipal Airport (CHD), Chandler, AZTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 2003)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The solo student pilot was conducting a cross-country flight when it impacted the terrain 212 ft before the approach end of the runway at the destination airport. The helicopter then slid about 30 ft and came to rest on its right side. A witness located about 1/2 mile west of the accident site reported seeing the helicopter go down and stated that the rotor blades were rotating before the impact. Postaccident airframe and engine examinations revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical failures or malfunctions that would have precluded normal operation. Given the upright orientation of the wreckage at impact, the significant damage to the underside of the fuselage, engine and skids, damage to the main rotor blades, coupled with the witness statement, were all consistent with a loss of control and a subsequent uncontrolled descent that resulted in the collision with terrain.
Probable cause
The student pilot’s failure to maintain control during the landing approach.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC22FA030
- Event ID
- 20220415104949
- Case number
- ANC22FA030
- 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: 9284587b2df6ea7b7a002c9a0f14524ba3fb93fa1a995bb3c4052666872bead0; retrieved 2026-09-15T07:43:13.898Z.