ERA25LA229 · Robinson Helicopter Co R66
Robinson Helicopter Co R66 · Accident: system/component malfunction/failure (non-power) while maneuvering
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's flight rules. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA25LA229
- 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
- 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 Co R66
- Aircraft type
- Robinson R66
- 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
- N633AF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 10 years (built 2015)
- 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 Narrative disagrees
- 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
- System/component malfunction/failure (non-power)
- 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 June 12, 2025, about 1850 eastern daylight time, a Robinson Helicopter R66, N633AF, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Valparaiso, Florida. The pilot and passenger sustained minor injuries, and a second passenger was not injured. The helicopter was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 136 air tour flight. The pilot stated that the accident flight was the fourth air tour flight of the day. After takeoff and during the transition to flight, about 15 ft above the ground, he heard a “pop,” and the helicopter made a hard right nosedive to the ground. He applied left cyclic, but nothing happened. The helicopter impacted the ground on its right side and shattered the windshield. The main rotor blades fractured into several pieces. The tail rotor and tail boom fractured off the helicopter and were located about 25 ft behind the main wreckage. During examination of the helicopter by a Federal Aviation Administration inspector and a representative from the helicopter manufacturer, they found that a bolt from the cyclic servo had backed out and fallen off the connecting rod. The bolt was located inside the wreckage. Other bolts were found to be only hand tight.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA25LA229
- Event ID
- 20250616200323
- Case number
- ERA25LA229
- 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: 77187932f478419c44340cfdfc85645b7e9a7a0339301227cc92df6d7de6b306; retrieved 2026-09-16T19:57:51.103Z.