SEA96LA106 · Hughes 369HS
Hughes 369HS · Accident: in flight collision with object en route
From Winnemucca Municipal Airport (WMC) to Baker City Municipal Airport (BKE)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA96LA106
- 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 369HS
- 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
- N444GJ
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Winnemucca Municipal Airport (WMC), Winnemucca, NVTo Baker City Municipal Airport (BKE), Baker City, OR
- 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
- En route · cruise
- 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
- In flight collision with object
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire, transmission
- 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
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Arock, OR, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
While flying at approximately 40 to 50 feet above ground level and 100 knots, the helicopter struck a power line. The pilot stated to state troopers after the accident that following the wire strike, 'he had side to side control but did not have up and down control.' The pilot stated on his accident report that he performed 'an emergency landing in rough terrain with substantial resulting damage.' He reported that he had not seen the wire the helicopter had struck.
Probable cause
the pilot's failure to see and avoid the transmission wire. A factor was the low altitude flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA96LA106
- Event ID
- 20001208X05884
- Case number
- SEA96LA106
- 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: 9e22407ad627d3837947a47324dc4b87ccaea248f8b86ae317aaa9218eb6549f; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:24:01.778Z.