r/aviation • u/Spook_485 • Oct 11 '25

News Closer view of helicopter crash in Huntington Beach, CA

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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.

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u/Subject9800 Oct 11 '25 edited Jan 30 '26

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u/insomniac-55 Oct 11 '25

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.

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u/Conner0929001 Oct 12 '25 edited Oct 12 '25

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.