LAX92LA326 · Hughes 369D
Pce Hughes 369D · Accident: hard landing
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX92LA326
- 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 369D
- 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
- N64MK
- Operator
- Pce
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From not recordedTo 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Dual student › Flare, excessive
- Dual student › Recovery from bounced landing, improper
- Dual student › Rotorcraft flight controls, improper use of
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Supervision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
ACCORDING TO THE STATEMENTS BY BOTH PILOTS, THE PURPOSE OF THE FLIGHT WAS TO CHECK OUT A NEW FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR ON THE HELICOPTER TYPE. WHILE PRACTICING AN AUTO ROTATION TO TOUCHDOWN, THE NEW FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR OVER ROTATED DURING THE FLARE AND SCRAPED THE TAIL SKID ON THE PAVEMENT. IN HIS STATEMENT, THE NEW FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR SAID HE THEN PULLED UP ON THE COLLECTIVE AND THE HELICOPTER BALLOONED UPWARD TO ABOUT 15 FEET AGL. THE MAIN ROTOR SPEED WAS LOW, AND, AS A RESULT, THE HELICOPTER LANDED HARD. THE MAIN ROTOR THEN FLEXED DOWNWARD AND SEVERED THE TAIL BOOM. THE FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR WHO WAS CHECKING OUT THE NEW PILOT SAID HE HAD HIS HANDS ON THE CONTROLS DURING THE MANEUVER BUT WAS 'UNABLE TO CORRECT FOR THE UNEXPECTED INPUT BY [THE STUDENT]' IN TIME TO PREVENT THE BALLOON AND THE SUBSEQUENT HARD LANDING.
Probable cause
THE STUDENT'S IMPROPER USE OF THE FLIGHT CONTROLS DURING AN ATTEMPTED RECOVERY FROM AN OVER ROTATION DURING THE FLARE, AND, THE FLIGHT INSTRUCTOR'S INADEQUATE SUPERVISION OF THE FLIGHT.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX92LA326
- Event ID
- 20001211X15218
- Case number
- LAX92LA326
- 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: a6ab6485b0592422545be96a9da71ec8fbec6295a15e7deb84913a4b29e6dc74; retrieved 2026-09-23T02:52:23.809Z.