CEN23LA306 · Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II · Accident while maneuvering
From Flora Municipal Airport (FOA) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN23LA306
- 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 Company R44 II
- 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
- N62RK
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flora Municipal Airport (FOA), Flora, ILTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 2004)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Unknown or undetermined
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that, while spraying corn about 15 ft above ground level and at an airspeed of about 60 miles per hour, the engine “started to spit and sputter” and then lost total power. He attempted to reduce the airspeed and initiated a flare before colliding with 10 ft tall corn stalks. During the impact with the corn stalks the helicopter’s landing gear skids and tail boom separated and the helicopter bounced off the ground. The helicopter became airborne, traveled about 30 ft, rolled over, and came to rest onto its left side. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the fuselage and tail boom. The pilot reported the helicopter fuel tanks contained about 10 gallons of fuel and an odor of fuel was noted at the accident site. Postaccident examination of the engine revealed no evidence of any preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. The reason for the reported loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A reported loss of engine power for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN23LA306
- Event ID
- 20230717192630
- Case number
- CEN23LA306
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2023-07-14.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 893bd1d7fa68c77abf21850049c9e26f20968f2d3793993e49c7670935a6d894; retrieved 2026-09-16T17:51:46.191Z.