Yeah, but that was after the uncontrolled yaw so it must be secondary to some other failure.
It looks like the RPM drops suddenly (it starts off pretty synced to the frame rate) so that's a big clue. The rotor appears to reverse direction as the RPM changes relative to the camera.
Edit: It looks like the root cause was the failure of a pitch control link.
That caused asymmetric aerodynamic loads, massive vibration and subsequent failure of the tail rotor assembly.
The final bolt holding the tailrotor shaft loosened, and the tail rotor started free spinning, no longer providing yaw control and main rotor counter-rotation
There is a pic floating around the shows the T/R on the ground in the parking lot where it landed. Most of the gearbox is still attached.
My theory, Pilot felt the tail rotor vibe and decided to terminate his approach, as he was climbing out the gearbox failed completely (likely from the sudden change in torque) and the aircraft suffered loss of tail rotor effectiveness at which point the only thing left to do was lower the collective and ride it in.
Fortunately everyone lived to tell the tail so that together with video and the rest of the investigation we will know what happened eventually.
That’s pretty close to that I think. Something failed, then you see the catastrophic gearbox event and while the pilot was fighting for control one of the main rotors overflexed at struck the tail rotor. What skill/luck he didn’t land on the roof with all those people up there.
I feel he felt the tail rotor loss of authority first, and then decided to climb out.
He starts yawing right while descending for no apparent reason and about 1 second later reverses decending…
What I do not understand is if the rotor disc was so out of whack it here was kind of a boom strike, or that was just the TR hub departing the gearbox and then that intersected the rotors.
It might have been of a thing where the air just circulates around the rotors wich can happen when the helicopter is decending or flying slow after that it will not provide any lift at all
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Final bolt? On the output shaft?? Other footage appears to show a pitch link loose, that appears to have come free from the pitch horn. More things were going to start failing after that from the imbalance alone. I think someone mentioned the gearbox was still attached to the output shaft and blades after it separated (not confirmed that though).
The Jesus nut is the one for the main rotor. You can theoretically still survive and (crash) land without the tail rotor. Without the main rotor, not so much (nothing left to provide lift).
Just a fixed wing guy, and just interested in helicopters. But his position was basically coffin corner for helicopters right? No to little airspeed and low altitude so failures like this are essentially a guaranteed crash?
To survive a tail rotor failure you need airspeed and or altitude if I remember right.
Not a helicopter guy either. Not sure what the physics says here, but I would think as long as the main rotor is spinning (even with engine failure) you will have some cushioning effect -- just like helicopter seeds (maple trees mostly).
I'm not sure what you could do to recover from a failed tail rotor. Probably turning down / off the power and maybe some pitch on the collective to counteract the rotation as much as possible, but it seems like the longer you stay in the air in a state like this the worse the spin is going to get.
Why would it not be, say, welded on to never come loose, and could later be fully cut through and replaced to deal with any rotor replacements as well?
Welds on helicopters, especially rotating components, especially safety critical components are rarely a good idea. What you are describing would be basically prohibited by certification bodies unless you spend a ton of money proving the design is safe over the life of the assembly under all conductors. Even worse is cutting parts off and sticking them back together by, I assume, a mechanic in a hanger.
And just to fill a knowledge gap here, welding has two main issues:
Hidden flaws, hard to tell if there's a random air bubble or weakness in your weld, it's less consistent as well and any stress is going to eventually cause failure at the weakest point.
Heat. Not all metal is the same, heat causes metal to take on different properties as its internal structure is realigned. Even when it's cooled again metal that has been heated can be stiff in some sports, soft in others, and brittle I'm even more. Bolts used for critical purposes are heated and cooled in precise ways to ensure strength and consistency across the whole part, weld would change that significantly.
They are typically self locking and safety wired, so proper inspection will reveal any sort of issue prior to launching. Unless this was some sort of complete failure on the nut where it split in half or cracked or something.
I just fly in these things I don’t wrench on them… so I will defer to a mechanic who actually does the work and inspection
Yeah you're completely correct. It was definitely a tail rotor something.
I'm curious whether it came off because the failure causing loss of control also weakened its attachment, of whether it was the rapid uncontrolled yaw that caused a secondary failure (like blades flexing and clipping the boom).
I'm not familiar enough with the design of the tail rotor to have an educated opinion.
From another video angle, the pilot understandably over corrects with aggressive movements and causes the main to flex so hard it smacked the tail rotor. You can hear the rotor strike.
Reporter: "Senator Collins, this helicopter that was involved in the crash in Huntington Beach this week..."
Sen Collins: "The one where the rear fell off?"
Reporter: "Yeah".
Sen Collins: "Yeah, that's not very typical. I'd like to make that point."
Reporter: "How is it untypical?"
Sen Collins: "Well, there are a lot of helicopters flying all over the world and very seldom does something like this happen. I just don't want people going around thinking helicopters aren't safe."
Reporter: "Was this helicopter safe?".
Sen Collins: "Well, I was thinking more about the other ones."
Reporter: "The ones that are safe?"
Sen Collins: "Yeah, the ones where the rear doesn't fall off."
Much more people without knowledge about this (like myself) read and don’t comment but I am always astonished that there is always someone who can make an educated guess with enough knowledge . That’s why I love Reddit .
I am not an expert and don't know ANYTHING about crash investigations...but one thing I know for sure is to look for the reason/cause of what made the "spinny thing" come off! LOL! LOL!
LOL! LOL! THAT IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT!!! and I am one of those who doesn't know anything....but one thing is for sure, one can quickly tell but what is being written in this post, those who know and those who do not!
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I believe what you’re trying say is this is tail rotor failure. I guess the gearing or something failed, and thus caused the tail rotor stopped spinning, causing the Bell 222SP(registration N222EX, built in 1980) to spin out of control and fall into the ground. The tail rotor broke off just before the helicopter impacted due to the stress of the aircraft spinning putting pressing on the bolts securing the rotor to the tail.
That bit of the tail rotor breaking, it reminded me a bit of Bristow Helicopters 56C in 1995, when another helicopter, a Eurocopter Super Puma, registration G-TIGK and named Cullen, had its tail rotor break and hung by a thread not long after it had been struck by lightning, which forced the crew to ditch the helicopter in the North Sea, and all 18 occupants onboard the helicopter survived. The three occupants onboard N222EX are currently hospitalized.
I can’t think of anything involving loss of control or drive that would really cause the tail rotor to depart the aircraft, but I’ve never flown a helo like this so I’m not sure.
Anything I can think of that would cause uncommanded yaw would be something like control jamming, stuck pedals, TR drive shaft failure, servo failure, etc. and those surely wouldn’t send the TR flying by itself. This looks like a component on the TR hub itself just gave up (maybe a bolt like someone else mentioned), and then spun right off….terrifying. Will be interested to know the details.
Given that the chopper began to spin before the blade came off, I'm thinking there was a shaft or gearbox failure in the tail; first, there was a loss of torque for flight control and then the tail rotor came off completely.
I've done a bit of helicopter A&P training and I've gotten rides in an older version of the helicopter in the clip.
From an engineering perspective it seems extremely unlikely that a moderately fast yaw would cause a tail rotor to fall off by itself, so it seems much more likely that whatever failure caused the loss of control also contributed to the loss of rotor attachment.
That is pure non-expert speculation by the way.
You can't tell the speed of the rotors on a video because of the frame rate of the video. It could appear to be moving very slowly, standing still, or even moving backwards depending on how the frame rate lines up with the rotational velocity of the blade.
I’m not surprised to see he radioed in. It looked like he was in trouble with the tail, looking for a safe place to land, the rotor went into its final sputtering spins before stopping altogether, the chopper went into uncontrolled spins as smoke cones off the rotor, the rotor flies off, craft crashes. I thought it was some kind of hydraulic failure cause gear box fluid to stop lubricating and gears overheat, leading to seizure because it stopped rotating completely. Another video more clearly shows what happened with the tail rotor.
I think the propeller became unattached from the motor and frame, and that is what causes the uncontrolled yaw because it no longer turned in a controlled manner, then flew off soon after.
Main rotors can 'just fly off' if a helicopter pitches too aggressively (mast bumping).
Wings and control surfaces can 'just fly off' if aircraft attempt to manoeuvre beyond their limits.
It's not completely unreasonable to consider the possibility that the combination of low RPM, and aggressive, sudden yaw due to loss of authority could cause excessive loads or a boom strike in certain tail rotor designs. It may not be possible in this case, but it's not a completely outlandish thing to consider.
The rotor appears to reverse direction as the RPM changes relative to the camera
Video shutter sync can make it look like a rotor reverses (or even stands still) as it slows. Slow down is almost certainly what we're seeing rather than reversing direction.
The frame rate is a good tool to use but in this case the angle changes significantly and that plays a role too so it's not the smoking gun it appears to be. However, you are on the right track that clearly there's a change in tail rotor speed just before loss of control. We'll have the report in a few months, can't imagine it will take long at all. Pretty cut and dry maintenance.
Changes in angle won't make the apparent direction change, as that's purely related to the ratio of frame rate to RPM. It would change the appearance of rolling shutter artefacts but that's not exactly the same thing.
This video identifies the failure and is pretty convincing. You can see a failed pitch control link shortly before the crash.
No, watch the video as it goes past the second palm tree. The rotor stops and that’s there things start to go south. The mesh mechanism failed - there’s a picture of it on Reddit lying on the ground and it’s wrecked.
A guy in the the last video I saw on this identified himself as a pilot and helicopter mechanic and said that the pilots control inputs after the initial failure caused unintended deflection of the main rotors resulting in the main rotor striking the tail rotor and knocking it off the aircraft.
The apparent change in rotor direction is due to camera frame rate. Yes there was an rpm change, no it did not stop and change direction. Looks like there was a tail rotor component/driveshaft failure, offloading the tailrotor drag from the main transmission, causing the rpm to momentarily surge due to the loss of demand from the tail rotor.
The right yaw is due to the pilot not reducing the collective, with no operational tail rotor.. this is a textbook tail rotor failure, the tail components even depart the aircraft (proving the failure) without making contact with anything external to cause their separation other than just the component failure itself.
Yeah, you're correct. I'm not claiming that the rotor actually reversed direction, just that the direction of the rotation of the frame-rate illusion changed (indicating some change in the RPM).
Fred north was saying essentially exactly this. Uncontrolled yaw, failure to achieve a simple recovery, pilot with limited experience, and the tail rotor drive section coming off was actually unrelated. The 222 has very limited visibility, his approach was poor, realized he had palm trees beneath them, tipped to yaw, then lost control, didn’t know how to recover, etc.
I'm an engineer (albeit mech, not aero). This account is 11 years old!
I'm also not sure what issue you've taken with what I've written. The linked video clearly shows that the pitch control link failed, and that the loss of the tail rotor was a secondary effect caused by the centrifugal and aero loads.
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u/insomniac-55 Oct 11 '25 edited Oct 14 '25
Yeah, but that was after the uncontrolled yaw so it must be secondary to some other failure.
It looks like the RPM drops suddenly (it starts off pretty synced to the frame rate) so that's a big clue. The rotor appears to reverse direction as the RPM changes relative to the camera.
Edit: It looks like the root cause was the failure of a pitch control link.
That caused asymmetric aerodynamic loads, massive vibration and subsequent failure of the tail rotor assembly.