WPR25LA034 · Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
Elkhorn Aviation Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II · Accident: external load event (Rotorcraft) while maneuvering
From Baker City Municipal Airport (BKE) to Durkee, OR
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR25LA034
- 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
- N4361R
- Operator
- Elkhorn Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Baker City Municipal Airport (BKE), Baker City, ORTo Durkee, OR
- Aircraft age
- About 15 years (built 2009)
- 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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
- External load event (Rotorcraft)
- 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 › Action/decision
- 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 pilot of the helicopter was using a 50-ft long line to transport equipment to a camp site. He estimated the gross weight of the helicopter to be about 2,450 lbs, the elevation to be about 5,300 ft mean sea level (msl), and the temperature to be about -1°C, for a density altitude of about 4,500 ft. After picking up the load from a staging area and conducting multiple power checks, he determined the conditions were acceptable. While transitioning to a hover out-of-ground-effect (OGE), about 60 ft above ground level (agl), the engine and rotor speed began to decay, and the helicopter lost lift and began descending. The pilot released the load and entered an autorotation. During the landing on sloping terrain, the main rotor blades impacted a tree, the right skid contacted the ground, and the helicopter rolled onto its side, which substantially damaged the fuselage, empennage, and tail cone. Examination of the helicopter revealed no preaccident mechanical malfunctions or failures that would have precluded normal operation. Examination of the main rotor blades revealed excessive upward coning, consistent with low rotor speed and the whooshing sound reported by the pilot. A test run of the engine revealed no anomalies. The individual who loaded the equipment stated that they normally weighed the loads; however, they did not do so on this occasion. Performance calculations revealed that, given the environmental conditions at the accident site around the accident time, the helicopter would have been marginally capable of an OGE hover at 2,450 lbs. The pilot conducted multiple power checks and assessed the conditions as acceptable; however, once the pilot transitioned the helicopter to an OGE hover with the external load, the power required to hover OGE likely exceeded the available engine power. Given the fact that the engine test run revealed no anomalies, the density altitude, the weight of the cargo, or both were likely higher than the pilot estimated, which would have reduced the helicopter’s OGE hover performance.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate performance planning, which resulted in insufficient engine power to transition into an out-of-ground-effect hover at a high gross weight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR25LA034
- Event ID
- 20241111195470
- Case number
- WPR25LA034
- 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: 13ac748e0359c11a097f5b6319b45d7eb003b6e5d1516f0ad859d385dfab968b; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:27:42.461Z.