CEN25LA389 · Robinson Helicopter R44
Veracity Aviation Robinson Helicopter R44 · Accident: loss of control on ground during landing
From Perot Field/Fort Worth Alliance Airport (AFW) to Perot Field/Fort Worth Alliance Airport (AFW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN25LA389
- 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
- N831VA
- Operator
- Veracity Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Perot Field/Fort Worth Alliance Airport (AFW), Fort Worth, TXTo Perot Field/Fort Worth Alliance Airport (AFW), Fort Worth, TX
- Aircraft age
- About 12 years (built 2013)
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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 on ground
- 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
- 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 flight instructor reported the instructional flight initially proceeded without incident. The plan was for the pilot-receiving-instruction to work on off-airport, pinnacle landings. The pilot’s first steep approach was completed with no issues. They moved about one-half mile to the west, and the pilot initiated an approach to an elevated dirt road. The road had a hump in the middle, and the pilot intentionally remained light on the skids to ensure a stable set down. However, as the nose of the helicopter began to rise due to the hump in the road, the tail rotor blades contacted the ground. The pilot subsequently lost control of the helicopter. The helicopter came to rest on a descending embankment from the road. The forward portion of the left landing skid, the tail skid, and the aft portion of the tail boom separated. One tail rotor blade was separated near mid-span and located at the accident site. Damage to the outboard leading edge of one main rotor blade appeared consistent with contact to the tail boom. The flight instructor stated there were no failures or malfunctions associated with the helicopter before the accident. He also noted that becoming more familiar with the helicopter before moving to complex maneuvers such as an off-airport, pinnacle landing might have resulted in a different outcome.
Probable cause
The pilot’s loss of control during an off-airport, pinnacle landing, and the flight instructor’s inadequate supervision of the instructional flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN25LA389
- Event ID
- 20250922201064
- Case number
- CEN25LA389
- 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: 8fa49b522d5cde9c7cbb93e0630e6c45e427294079241be2bd9fed10bde215a1; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:22:23.120Z.