The National Transportation Safety Board has determined that a flight instructor's decision to reach across the cockpit and adjust the engine governor mid-hover caused a helicopter crash at Cedar City Regional Airport on May 23. Dramatic surveillance footage released by the NTSB shows the red Bell 206-L4 lifting off, then slamming into the runway and bouncing violently before skidding off the asphalt, with the tailboom and main rotor system eventually separating from the aircraft. Both the instructor and the student pilot walked away with only minor injuries, despite the severity of the damage to the helicopter itself. The NTSB's finding places the blame squarely on the instructor losing control of the aircraft while his attention and hands were briefly diverted from flying.

Veteran flight instructors say the incident is a stark reminder of just how little margin for error exists in a helicopter compared to a fixed-wing aircraft, where pilots typically have far more time to catch and correct a mistake before it becomes a crash. In a helicopter, especially during a hover, that reaction window can be cut by more than half, leaving almost no room to recover from a distraction at the wrong moment. Common advice among instructors is to avoid any nonessential task while airborne. If an adjustment can wait until the aircraft is safely on the ground, it should, since dealing with an issue like a governor problem with the skids planted on the tarmac is far preferable to sorting it out mid-flight. The Cedar City crash, while destructive, ended without serious injury, a fact many in the training community are calling a stroke of luck rather than an outcome to count on.