WPR23LA265 · Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA
Robinson Helicopter R22 BETA · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Caldwell Executive Airport (KEUL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR23LA265
- 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
- N74778
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Caldwell Executive Airport (KEUL), Caldwell, IDTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 18 years (built 2005)
- 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 from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that he was demonstrating a turning autorotation to his student. The instructor entered the glide, turned, and kept the engine and rotor RPM gauges in the green arc, while maintaining an airspeed of about 55 knots. He increased the throttle setting and raised the collective lever as the helicopter descended through 200 ft AGL, however, the rotor RPMs fell below the green arc. The instructor made the decision to continue the autorotation with ground contact and applied aft cyclic to reduce the decent rate. The helicopter landed hard and nosed over onto its right side, resulting in substantial damage to the tailboom and tail rotor assembly. The instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The instructor’s failure to maintain airspeed during a simulated turning autorotation, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR23LA265
- Event ID
- 20230710192583
- Case number
- WPR23LA265
- 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, coordinates, 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: 392e57a07accbd5c35e6268d6d3340abdb7463b30050fa607c6a8253cc5af06e; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:50:18.266Z.