FTW97LA079 · Hughes 369HS
Hughes 369HS · Accident: loss of control in flight during landing
From 3V5 · Fort Collins, CO to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW97LA079
- 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
- N9089F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From 3V5 · Fort Collins, COTo 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
- Landing
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Autorotation, improper
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said the helicopter wanted to 'spin to the left.' He made a precautionary landing, monitored the engine instruments, and performed some 'hover checks.' Finding nothing amiss, the pilot took off and climbed to 6,000 feet. He said aircraft control 'became more difficult' and he elected to land in an open field. When collective was applied, the helicopter rolled left and impacted the terrain. Wreckage examination disclosed no evidence of pre-existing malfunction/failure. A helicopter flight instructor, who helped the pilot ferry the helicopter from Florida to Colorado one month before the accident, said the pilot 'had no idea what he was doing. He was far behind the aircraft.' The instructor said the pilot habitually pressed left pedal and either flew in complete circles or flew in a shallow left skid. Autorotation demonstrations were equally poor, and the instructor told the pilot he 'needed a lot of work.'
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain control of the aircraft and his improper autorotation technique that induced the roll and subsequent ground collision. A factor was his lack of recurrent training.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW97LA079
- Event ID
- 20001208X07284
- Case number
- FTW97LA079
- 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: d932bd0c790b98724153e64700e3174a5ccaba6355dd4e61ce7637fd042eb710; retrieved 2026-09-21T21:31:35.514Z.