Board Finds Pilot Erred in Fatal Helicopter Crash : Inquiry: Officials say surgeon who died in May 8 accident didn’t follow emergency procedures when engine quit in mid-flight. The copter involved is called a ‘high-risk craft.’

Federal safety officials probing the May 8 fatal crash of a helicopter in Anaheim found that the aircraft’s engine quit in mid-flight and the pilot failed to execute emergency procedures.

Officials said pilot Todd Passoff, who died in the crash, did not auto-rotate the chopper blades when the power quit. Auto-rotation is an emergency procedure in which the pilot disengages the main rotor blades from the engine. This helps the blades rotate on their own as the aircraft descends, greatly reducing the speed of the fall.

Federal Aviation Administration files show that the type of helicopter involved in the crash--a Robinson R-22 built in Torrance--has been involved in a relatively high number of accidents and fatalities contrasted with other small commuter choppers.

The November, 1990, issue of Aviation Safety, a Connecticut-based publication that tracks FAA accident statistics, described the R-22 as a “high-risk rotor craft. . . . The margin for error is razor-thin.”

“The helicopter, back a number of years ago, had some mechanical problems,” said Frank Jensen of Alexandria, Va.-based Helicopter Assn. International. “The weak point is that many of the aircraft are owner-flown. It’s the most inexpensive helicopter that anybody can buy, and many of the buyers are professionals (doctors, lawyers). But if there was a commonality in the accidents, it’s the lack of training among the owners.”

So far, no mechanical reason for the May 8 engine shutdown on Passoff’s helicopter has been found. He was flying alone, and no one else was injured.

“There have been no clues at all,” said Rich Childress, an investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board. The investigation is continuing.

Childress said there are also no clues indicating why Passoff did not try to auto-rotate. “He hit the ground at a high rate of descent,” Childress said. “It was a nearly vertical descent. The aircraft didn’t slide forward at all.”

A prominent orthopedic surgeon, Passoff died in the emergency room at Anaheim Memorial Hospital, where he had performed surgery just hours before.

He had taken off from the hospital’s helipad en route to the office of the sports medicine clinic he operated in Temecula. A few minutes after takeoff, however, the helicopter briefly hovered and then nosed over, crashed atop a parked pickup truck and bounced into a sand pile at the Foster Sand & Gravel Co. at the northwest corner of Patt and Commercial streets.

As part of the investigation, Childress said, the engine and air frame were completely disassembled, though he is still awaiting the results of chemical tests on the fuel.

With about 2,100 sold, the R-22 is one of the best-selling helicopters in the United States, partly because of its relatively low base price--about $109,000. It’s used widely in pilot training, cattle herding, law enforcement and traffic reporting, but experts like Jensen and Childress call it a very unforgiving machine.

For example, a pilot flying an R-22 has less than three seconds to auto-rotate before it’s too late and the aircraft becomes totally uncontrollable, Childress said. He said the time may be as low as one or two seconds. He, Jensen and other other experts said that failure to auto-rotate causes the rotor blades to lose the angle and speed necessary to avoid a crash. What’s more, trying to restart the engine in mid-flight can cause the rotor blades to stall, which “drops the aircraft like a stone,” Childress said.

Between 1984 and 1988, R-22s were involved in 141 accidents, for an accident rate of 29.8 per 100,000 hours of flight in the aircraft. There were 24 fatalities during the same period, with a fatality rate of 5.1 per 100,000 hours, according to Aviation Safety, the publication that compiled the statistics from FAA records.

Among small, commuter helicopters, there was one with a higher accident rate than the R-22, though it had a lower fatality rate. This was the Enstrom F28, which had 161 accidents during the same five-year period, but flew less, so it had a higher accident rate of 35.6 per 100,000 hours. The Enstrom’s fatality rate, however, was lower than the R-22’s--2.9 per 100,000 hours, according to Aviation Safety.

In contrast, the Hynes B2, which was flown half as much as the R-22 or the Enstrom F28, was involved in only 25 accidents, had an accident rate of 11.3, and a fatality rate of 0.9.

Jensen said the R-22’s accident rate had been “unusually high” in the past but attributed this to use by a lot of “low-time” pilots. Frank Robinson, the R-22’s creator, said his own statistical analysis shows that most of the accidents involved pilots with fewer than 500 hours of flight time.

“It’s not a toy,” said John B. Galipault of the Ohio-based Aviation Safety Institute, a private organization. “But in the wrong hands, it can seem like one.”

Since 1988, the R-22 has been involved in 138 accidents and 23 fatalities, according to FAA records reviewed by The Times. The FAA, which compiles estimates on hours of use, did not have such information immediately available to calculate up-to-date accident and fatality rates.

But while earlier accidents were sometimes related to mechanical failures, virtually all of post-1988 crashes did not, and typically involved pilots flying too low, hitting power lines or water, dynamic rollover (pole-vaulting the chopper over the front edge of its landing skids) or taking off without enough power.

Many experts blame purchasers who, although possessing a helicopter license, have little experience or fail to regularly practice emergency procedures. The R-22 is used in about 80% of all civilian training in helicopters, which many pilots believe is at least partly responsible for the aircraft’s accident rate.

“Like all helicopters, they desperately wish to crash, every second of every flight, so you’d best pay attention,” said John Deakin, a pilot who has flown R-22s a few times.

In 1982, Robinson introduced a new flight training program and strict maintenance procedures for purchasers.

Passoff had taken the special training course in addition to his regular flight school instruction, but that was about four years ago, said Robinson, founder and president of the helicopter firm.

Although R-22s as a group were grounded twice for mechanical defects more than a decade ago and were reviewed for airworthiness by the FAA, the agency now believes Robinson’s problems are behind him.

Although some helicopters require more sensitive handling than others, FAA officials said they don’t believe it’s necessary or desirable to have separate training requirements for each type.

“If we thought a particular type of aircraft was beyond the capabilities of the average pilot,” said FAA spokesman Fred Farrar, “we wouldn’t certify its airworthiness in the first place.”

Helicopter Profile

What: Robinson R-22

Manufacturer: Robinson Aircraft, Torrance, Calif.

Uses: Flight training, cattle herding, TV and feature filming, traffic watch, aerial photography, law enforcement, personal transport, fish spotting.

First flight: 1975

Number sold: About 2,100

Capacity: One pilot, one passenger

Cruise speed: 119 miles per hour

Maximum range: 323 miles, with special fuel tanks

Ceiling: 14,000 feet

Base price: $108,850

Source: 1992 Helicopter Annual, published by Helicopter Assn. International