NYC95LA170 · Hughes 269B
Hughes 269B · Accident: main gear collapsed while standing
From P48 to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC95LA170
- 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 269B
- 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
- N9483F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From P48To 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 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
- Standing · engine(s) operating
- 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
- Main gear collapsed
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Landing gear, main gear shock absorbing strut › Corroded
- Landing gear, main gear shock absorbing strut › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot stated that after takeoff from the heliport, 'He felt a low frequency vibration.' He elected to return to the heliport to determine the cause of the vibration. After the pilot landed, he had the collective positioned to full down when the helicopter began a violent forward and aft gyration. The main rotors struck the ground. Examination of the landing skids revealed that the left (4H) shock strut assembly had separated from the landing skid due to severe exfoiliation corrosion at both attaching lugs. All three remaining struts were attached.
Probable cause
Corrosion and subsequent failure of the attaching lugs for the left (4H) shock strut assembly, which resulted in collapse of the landing gear/skid.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC95LA170
- Event ID
- 20001207X04070
- Case number
- NYC95LA170
- 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: 0e3a8f29f234308737c14dd04536aa48ea2d2ed4b59a867ad2a509fe9e069052; retrieved 2026-09-22T23:34:42.389Z.