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Atlas / NTSB / WPR23LA043

NTSB CAROL · Event

Event WPR23LA043

2022-11-11 Kapolei, Hawaii, United States Airport · JRF None 1 aircraft Status: Completed

Aircraft involved

Probable cause & findings

The pilot receiving instruction’s rapid reduction in throttle during hover autorotation training which resulted in a loss of control and collision with the ground.

Factual narrative

The flight instructor reported that, while conducting hover autorotation training from about one foot above the ground, the pilot receiving instruction quickly closed the throttle. The helicopter subsequently descended rapidly, caught the left skid on the pavement and rolled over to the left. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the tail boom and main rotor blades. The flight instructor reported that there were no preaccident mechanical failures or malfunctions with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation. Source: NTSB Aviation Accident Database Retrieved: 2026-02-12

NTSB Findings

Hierarchical cause / factor breakdown from the FAA bulk avdata database. Each finding tagged C (Cause) or F (Factor).

  • Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Aircraft control-Student/instructed pilot
  • Aircraft-Aircraft oper/perf/capability-Performance/control parameters-Lateral/bank control-Not attained/maintained
  • Personnel issues-Task performance-Use of equip/info-Use of equip/system-Student/instructed pilot

Verbatim from NTSB's published report. Source file NTSB_2022_WPR23LA043.txt. Findings + structured fields enriched from FAA avall.mdb. Full investigation docket on data.ntsb.gov ↗.

Related research

What the literature says.

Academic papers and agency reports matching this event's aircraft type or causal vocabulary (loss of control). Sourced from NASA NTRS, NTSB Safety Studies, FAA CAMI, AOPA Air Safety Institute, Embry-Riddle Scholarly Commons, arXiv, and the Semantic Scholar academic graph.

Browse the full corpus — academia portal ↗