SEA98LA063 · Hughes 269A
Hughes 269A · Accident: hard landing
From S67 · Nampa, ID to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA98LA063
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N5161E
- Operator
- Clark, Ron. A · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From S67 · Nampa, IDTo 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 · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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(cfi) › Proper descent rate, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The instructor and the student pilot departed on a training flight with the intention of practicing off airport landings. The instructor maneuvered the helicopter towards a plateau with cliffs on three of its sides, and initiated a demonstration of a pinnacle landing. He then noticed the development of an excessive sink rate and wind change and attempted to correct with collective and throttle. Shortly thereafter, he reached the stop on the throttle and the RPM began decaying. The instructor lowered collective and the rotorcraft impacted the ground hard bouncing back into the air 10-12 feet before striking the ground a second time, during which the tail rotor impacted the ground. Directional control was lost and the rotorcraft rolled over the edge of the plateau and down a steeply sloped embankment. The instructor pilot had logged only 3 hours of flight time, all in the accident aircraft make within the previous 90 days. A weather observation recorded at the Caldwell airport 11 nm south of the accident site reported winds from 110 degrees at 9 knots with gusts to 14 knots. The instructor pilot reported that there was no mechanical malfunction with the rotorcraft during the flight.
Probable cause
The instructor pilot's failure to maintain the proper rate of descent on landing. Factors were a sudden wind shift, the instructor pilot's lack of recent experience, and terrain drop-off.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA98LA063
- Event ID
- 20001211X09959
- Case number
- SEA98LA063
- 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: 174aea6dddb34db4c9d1770a51128b7a8e001afca2ab9d42713d6a5b1ab44540; retrieved 2026-09-20T22:37:58.253Z.