CEN26LA276 · Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II
DK Aircraft Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II · Accident: hard landing during autorotation
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN26LA276
- 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 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
- N26KL
- Operator
- DK Aircraft
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 19 years (built 2007)
- 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 137: Agricultural
- 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
- Autorotation
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
On August 2, 2026, about 1318 central daylight time, a Robinson Helicopter Company R44 II helicopter, N26KL, was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Bennett, Iowa. The pilot was not injured. The helicopter was operated as a Title 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 137 agricultural flight.
The pilot reported that as the helicopter passed over a tree line he felt a vibration in the airframe and when the vibration increased he decided to perform an autorotation into the next field. According to the pilot, the helicopter descended rapidly from about 20 ft above the ground which resulted in a hard landing.
A witness to the accident reported hearing an “awful” noise before the helicopter passed over a tree. The witness stated that as the helicopter descended the main rotor blades almost stopped rotating when the helicopter was about 10 to 15 ft above the ground, and then the helicopter dropped vertically into the field.
The airframe and tailboom sustained substantial damage during the hard landing.
The helicopter was recovered to a secure facility pending an examination.
Verbatim NTSB factual narrative from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN26LA276
- Event ID
- 20260804203517
- Case number
- CEN26LA276
- 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. 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: 6a56287ce253c66a63200985f594df107c7b890219043ca77898dd0aa2f1fad3; retrieved 2026-09-17T05:22:35.351Z.