CEN23LA247 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Summerskyz Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA247
- 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
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
- N4076H
- Operator
- Summerskyz
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 32 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
- Maneuvering
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated that when they performed the vortex ring state emergency procedure, the pilot under instruction told him that the helicopter was not producing power. During the descent, the flight controls were then transferred to the flight instructor. The flight instructor stated that the helicopter was not producing power. The flight instructor said he then proceeded to turn northbound to avoid a boat and personnel and landed on a lake. A witness video showed the helicopter descend above the lake and stop the descent in about a 12-15 ft hover. It did a left hover turn for about 90°. The helicopter then stopped turning and appeared to hover taxi forward before it entered a descent. The helicopter skids entered the water and were submerged up to the bottom of the helicopter fuselage. While partially submerged, the helicopter began to rotate to the right and climb out to the bottom of the skids before it rolled left and descended into the water. The video showed that the helicopter was able to hover, perform a hover turn, and attain a partial climb out of the water, all of which demonstrated that the helicopter was not limited in engine performance due to the excess power available to perform these maneuvers.
Postaccident examination of the helicopter revealed no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal helicopter operation.
Probable cause
The failure of the flight instructor to attain/maintain aircraft control while maneuvering, which resulted in an uncontrolled descent and impact with the lake.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA247
- Event ID
- 20230621192412
- Case number
- CEN23LA247
- 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: 2bc2c0f5b60880e11c588ecc1056a5ca0ada39311fb620ee574c4b7983a4d5c9; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:44:54.255Z.