CEN25LA105 · Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
Kiwi Air Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II · Accident: cabin safety event while maneuvering
From Rapid City, SD to Rapid City, SD
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA105
- 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
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- 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
- N6555C
- Operator
- Kiwi Air
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rapid City, SDTo Rapid City, SD
- Aircraft age
- About 20 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 · 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
- Cabin safety event
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The purpose of the flight was to survey and capture elk and was operated with the pilot and a non-flight crewmember, the gunner. The gunner’s purpose was to tranquilize elk from the maneuvering helicopter as the pilot positioned the helicopter to match the speed of a target elk. The gunner, who was clipped into the helicopter with a safety harness, fell out of the helicopter while conducting the elk capture operation and sustained serious injuries. The pilot landed the helicopter without further incident. A postaccident examination of the helicopter revealed that the anchor point for the front passenger seat restraint system separated and was still attached to the gunner’s harness. Examination of the separation surfaces revealed deformation along the circumference of each end of the tubing. The gunner was not using the helicopter’s passenger seat restraint system when he fell out of the helicopter; rather, he was using a harness restraint system that was anchored to the vertical tube of the helicopter’s supplemental shoulder harness guide system. The pilot stated that the gunner selected and secured the anchor point for the harness before the flight and the gunner stated that the pilot selected and secured the anchor point. According to the helicopter manufacturer, the anchor point utilized for the harness was not designed to sustain side loads, which resulted in its separation and the gunner falling out of the helicopter.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to properly identify the proper anchor point for the supplemental harness and the crew’s incorrect use of the restraint system structure as an anchor point, which resulted in the separation of the structure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA105
- Event ID
- 20250228199776
- Case number
- CEN25LA105
- 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, damage. 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: 680577fa9a739b8cc0cc0bd8bae6fb7c77adc86d84a8f451ae7977d13f772228; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:41:52.698Z.