ERA22LA256 · Robinson Helicopter R44
High Tide Helicopters Robinson Helicopter R44 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) while maneuvering
From Cape Fear Regional Jetport / Howie Franklin Field Airport (SUT) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA256
- 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 Helicopter R44
- 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
- N132TC
- Operator
- High Tide Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cape Fear Regional Jetport / Howie Franklin Field Airport (SUT), Southport, NCTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 20 years (built 2002)
- 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 · hover
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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
Seconds after liftoff to a hover, the helicopter began to “aggressively shudder.” Loud, rapid reports were heard, and the nose of the helicopter yawed to the left. The instructor assumed control of the helicopter, closed the throttle, and performed an autorotation from a hover, landing the helicopter upright on its skids; however, the airframe sustained substantial damage. The instructor completed an engine shutdown, egressed the helicopter, and noticed that the main rotor was still turning while the tail rotor remained stationary. A cursory examination of the helicopter revealed that the clutch shaft yoke fractured at one of its two bolt lugs where the yoke attached to the flex plate. All other damage depicted appeared to be impact damage from the rotating assemblies left unsecured by the fractured lug. Examination of the damaged yoke and flexplate in the NTSB materials laboratory revealed a fractured attachment lug on the forward clutch shaft yoke due to fatigue failure with multiple origins.
Probable cause
The fractured attachment lug on the forward clutch shaft yoke due to fatigue failure with multiple origins.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA256
- Event ID
- 20220602105177
- Case number
- ERA22LA256
- 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: 31c7b556531a39c1df5f085d35dafd4baeae142c82b99162f3e2b20b01943022; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:17:06.304Z.