CEN26LA119 · Robinson Helicopter Co R66
Robinson Helicopter Co R66 · Accident: roll over during landing
From Mineral Wells, TX to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA119
- 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 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
- N940BH
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Mineral Wells, TXTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 4 years (built 2022)
- 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
- Roll over
- 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
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot departed for a short flight to his own private landing area. While approaching to land, he initiated a practice autorotation toward the hangar. During the descent, all indications appeared normal. As the pilot started the flare and increased the throttle, the low rotor RPM warning activated. He continued the flare to reduce forward speed and the low rotor RPM warning sounded again. At this point, the pilot elected to perform a run-on landing. He lowered the nose of the helicopter to level the skids. The ground was soft due to recent rain and after the helicopter skidded about 15 feet, the left skid dug into the soft ground, and the helicopter tilted forward, and the main rotor blades contacted the ground. The helicopter rolled onto its left side and the tail boom separated which resulted in substantial damage to the main and tail rotor blades. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical anomalies with the helicopter which would have precluded normal operations.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to maintain sufficient rotor speed during a practice autorotation to soft terrain which resulted in a loss of control and roll over.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA119
- Event ID
- 20260219202454
- Case number
- CEN26LA119
- 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: local date, investigation status, cause areas. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2026-02-19.
- API snapshot SHA-256: a5c25e6503cf82a40c14f8607a3ba869b921feb090126bea3e112b1b8df60b6c; retrieved 2026-09-16T20:47:16.730Z.