CHI97LA277 · Hughes 269A
Hughes 269A · Accident: loss of control in flight on approach
From Council Bluffs Municipal Airport (CBF) to Council Bluffs Municipal Airport (CBF)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI97LA277
- 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 269A
- 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
- N7058T
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Council Bluffs Municipal Airport (CBF)To Council Bluffs Municipal Airport (CBF)
- 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
- Approach
- 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
- Designated examiner › Autorotation, delayed
- Designated examiner › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
A Designated Pilot Examiner (DPE), reported that he was administering a Commercial, Rotorcraft-Helicopter Practical Test to an applicant (student). The DPE instructed the student to perform a 'simulated engine failure' from 450 agl over runway 13, and the DPE initiated the maneuver by reducing the throttle to idle. The student did not respond, and the rotor RPM decreased. After assessing the situation, the DPE took control of the helicopter. He tried to recover from the maneuver by decreasing the collective to the full down position, increasing the throttle, and applying slight forward cyclic. The DPE was unable to recover from the maneuver, and the helicopter impacted in a slight nose low attitude, then it bounced and came to rest on its left side. A witness to the accident said that he saw the helicopter at 50 to 75 feet above the ground before its forward speed stopped and it entered a steep, spiral descent. After reaching the accident site, the witness heard the student ask the DPE what had happened and if something failed. The DPE's response was, 'No...it was me, I failed.'
Probable cause
inadequate supervision by the designated examiner by failing to ensure a timely autorotation recovery was initiated. A related factor was: the student pilot allowed the rotor rpm to diminish after the examiner simulated a loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI97LA277
- Event ID
- 20001208X08601
- Case number
- CHI97LA277
- 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: d52c8857f6405af3ae4ea3a8e9e3196833f905e6e75458156cdb85eeb46a5092; retrieved 2026-09-21T11:51:06.514Z.