LAX94LA146 · Hughes 269C
Hughes 269C · Accident: hard landing
From an unrecorded airport to Stockton Metropolitan Airport (SCK)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94LA146
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 0
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Hughes 269C
- Aircraft type
- Hughes 269
- Category
- Helicopter
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N9593F
- Operator
- William C. Moore · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo Stockton Metropolitan Airport (SCK), Stockton, CA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- First occurrenceThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Hard landing
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Proper descent rate, misjudged
- Pilot in command › Throttle/power control, delayed
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Merced, CA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
The pilot was on a flight test for a CFI certificate with an FAA inspector. The inspector directed the pilot/applicant to perform a practice 180-degree autorotation, terminating with a power recovery. Upon entry, at 650 feet agl, the needles split, the rotor rpm was in the green, and the engine stabilized at 2,000 RPM. During the maneuver, the inspector noted that the helicopter was apparently going to overshoot the termination point. About 50 feet agl, the pilot began deceleration and the aircraft began to settle. At that point, the inspector still had not heard the engine rpm increase. Concerned that the throttle had not been rolled on, he took the controls and attempted to open the throttle. In spite of his efforts, the helicopter continued to settle, touched down hard about 100 feet beyond the termination point, bounced once, pitched forward, and then impacted a second time. The helicopter then rolled tail over nose finally coming to rest on its right side. A postaccident inspection failed to identify any discrepancies in the engine or power controls.
Probable cause
the pilot's misjudgement of the descent rate and his delayed throttle application.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94LA146
- Event ID
- 20001206X00920
- Case number
- LAX94LA146
- Dataset
- historical-pre2008
- Source SHA-256
- 89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: bfd6a336ce0a6c250b7be75559e3aa291201527b042788ea7f147f5f2bc52bd0; retrieved 2026-09-21T22:42:18.734Z.