CEN25LA116 · Robinson Helicopter R44 II
Summerskyz Robinson Helicopter R44 II · Accident en route
From Lansing Municipal Airport (IGQ) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA116
- 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
- Ongoing
- 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 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
- N128AF
- Operator
- Summerskyz
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Lansing Municipal Airport (IGQ), Lansing, ILTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 2006)
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On March 10, 2025, about 18:30 central daylight time, a Robinson Helicopter R44 II, N128AF was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Chicago, Illinois. The pilot and both passengers were not injured. The helicopter was operated under the provisions of Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91 sightseeing flight. The helicopter departed Lansing Municipal Airport (IGQ), Lansing, Illinois about 17:45. The pilot stated that they flew north, about 25 nm, along the Lake Michigan shoreline to Navy Pier, and then proceeded south back towards IGQ at an altitude of about 1,000 ft above ground level. About 4 nm south of Navy Pier, the pilot reported that the helicopter clutch light came on but only for about 5 seconds. Shortly after, the pilot said he could smell burning rubber and then the clutch light illuminated again. He pulled the clutch circuit breaker and was preparing to land as soon as practical when the tail section of the helicopter began to vibrate and then he heard a loud bang. The pilot autorotated the helicopter to an open area on a golf course. The pilot and both passengers exited the helicopter uninjured. After landing, the pilot inspected the helicopter and discovered that the tail boom was substantially damaged because of the autorotation. The helicopter was transported to a secure location for further examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA116
- Event ID
- 20250311199828
- Case number
- CEN25LA116
- 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. 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: 8ea0b9b50c0fc986817aa15450bb17712902becd663ce57ad5715c08e0e6eb35; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:43:19.415Z.