ERA23LA350 · Robinson Helicopter R44
Robinson Helicopter R44 · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA23LA350
- 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 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
- N4147Q
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 2008)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Psychological
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 stated that the accident flight was an introductory flight for a new student pilot. He stated that during an introductory flight, it was normal for a student pilot to take the cyclic control and get familiar with the “feel” of the helicopter. During the accident pilot, the student pilot hovered the helicopter at 10 ft above ground level for about 10 minutes with no anomalies, then suddenly, the student pilot pushed the cyclic forward and to the right “very fast.” The flight instructor could not regain control before the main rotor contacted the ground. The helicopter rolled to the right and came to rest on tits right side, sustaining substantial damage to the main rotor mast, tail rotor, and fuselage. The flight instructor stated there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures of the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s inadequate supervision of the student pilot during hover flight, which resulted in main rotor blade contact with the ground after the student pilot applied a sudden control input.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA23LA350
- Event ID
- 20230826192947
- Case number
- ERA23LA350
- 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: 31adccd9fb9c5f020d529c5d096661b3dca99d6102437bc4a6d04f5f5062a5ed; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:03:02.739Z.