ATL99LA035 · Hughes 269A
Hughes 269A · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From WSCC to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ATL99LA035
- 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
- N271JB
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From WSCCTo 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
- En route · climb to 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
- Loss of engine power
- 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 · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor reported that the student pilot was flying the helicopter for the dark night takeoff. According to the flight instructor, shortly after climbing through 100 feet, the engine lost power. The flight instructor initiated an autorotation. During the touchdown phase of the autorotation, the helicopter collided with the ground. During the subsequent landing gyrations, the flight instructor stated that, a main rotor blade severed the tail boom, and the helicopter also rolled over. No mechanical problems with the helicopter were discovered during the subsequent post-impact examination. The engine assembly was removed from the airframe and installed in an engine test cell. During the functional test run the engine operated smoothly through all power ranges.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. Factors were a dark night and terrain condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ATL99LA035
- Event ID
- 20001211X11517
- Case number
- ATL99LA035
- 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: local date, investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 1998-12-16.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 7b233459e50f209f5b0091f08b0f132770954d6526cbb4792020090a984acb46; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:38:00.086Z.