LAX94LA241 · Hughes 369D
Cherry Helicopters Hughes 369D · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX94LA241
- 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 369D
- Aircraft type
- Hughes 369
- 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
- N4943T
- Operator
- Cherry Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL), Honolulu, HITo not recorded
- 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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
- Maneuvering · hover
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Company/operator management › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Preflight planning/preparation, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said the helicopter was lifting construction supplies to a power line tower in a mountainous area above the staging area. On the accident flight segment, the helicopter had delivered a load of dry cement in a cargo net and was returning with the empty paper bags in the cargo net. As the helicopter established a 20-foot hover at the staging area, the net flew upward into the tail rotor. The tail rotor assembly and gear box separated from the tail boom and the helicopter began to spin. The pilot lowered the collective to initiate an autorotation and the helicopter landed hard.
Probable cause
the operator's and pilot's failure to ensure that the cargo net containing empty paper bags was sufficiently ballasted to prevent it from flying up into the tail rotor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX94LA241
- Event ID
- 20001206X01560
- Case number
- LAX94LA241
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1994-06-07.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 01406c12892b2b3004a2a91cb1780d4e45556f2d2e2cf9f1a8416fe9079862ac; retrieved 2026-09-23T01:01:40.802Z.