FTW96LA244 · Hughes 269
Hughes 269 · Accident: roll over while maneuvering
From Addison Airport (ADS) to Addison Airport (ADS)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW96LA244
- 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 269
- 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
- N269A
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Addison Airport (ADS)To Addison Airport (ADS)
- 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
- 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
- Roll over
- 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
- Dual student › Dynamic rollover, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the flight instructor, the training flight was planned to practice hover related maneuvers. The practice area was a smooth, flat, grassy area on the west side of the airport, between the control tower and the runway. With the instructor pilot monitoring the controls, the student pilot prepared to lift into a hover. The instructor pilot stated that, the helicopter was 'into the wind', the controls 'appeared to feel correct', and control inputs were 'slow, smooth, and deliberate'. The aircraft 'left the ground (not completely) right skid low' and began to roll to the right (the pilot stated that, he believed that the right skid did not break contact with the ground). Despite the instructors application of left lateral cyclic, the craft continued to roll to the right, resulting in the main rotor blades contacting the ground. Subsequently, the helicopter came to rest on its right side. The winds at the time of the accident were from 350 degrees at 20 knots, gusting to 30.
Probable cause
The student pilot's encounter with dynamic rollover while hovering. Factors were the prevailing high winds and the inadequate supervision provided by the flight instructor.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW96LA244
- Event ID
- 20001208X05968
- Case number
- FTW96LA244
- 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: f3423754d83671a6481649d39d1481594d74719b1de06a1a64aa1be96cbbae06; retrieved 2026-09-22T22:19:42.503Z.