CEN23LA219 · Robinson Helicopter R44
Michigan Helicopters Robinson Helicopter R44 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Oakland County International Airport (PTK) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA219
- 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
- N7102Z
- Operator
- Michigan Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Oakland County International Airport (PTK), Waterford, MITo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 10 years (built 2013)
- 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
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A flight instructor and a private pilot receiving instruction were performing a hovering maneuver as part of a flight lesson. During an exchange of the flight controls, a gust of wind moved the helicopter backward. The flight instructor reassumed control of the helicopter, but the tail rotor assembly struck the ground and separated from the helicopter. He then performed a hovering autorotation, the helicopter landed upright on its skids and the occupants egressed the helicopter without injury. The ground strike resulted in substantial damage to the tailboom assembly. The flight instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight crew’s inadequate compensation for gusting wind, and the flight instructor’s delayed remedial action, which resulted in impact with the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA219
- Event ID
- 20230601192275
- Case number
- CEN23LA219
- 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: b8a3890a3996aab378c0a8d19e12bfd5ad76a0b305850cc5421356c280db2e40; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:39:58.474Z.