FTW92LA199 · Hughes 369HS
Hughes 369HS · Accident: loss of engine power during initial climb
From Monroe Regional Airport (MLU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW92LA199
- 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
- N501FH
- Operator
- Coffman, Leslie R. · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Monroe Regional Airport (MLU)To 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Pilot in command › Adequate rotor RPM, not maintained
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Monroe, LA, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE PURPOSE OF THE FLIGHT WAS TO TRACK THE MAIN ROTOR SYSTEM. THE DEPARTURE WAS TO THE SOUTHEAST AND THE WINDS WERE FROM THE WEST AT 5 KNOTS. DURING THE INITIAL CLIMB AT APPROXIMATELY 100 FEET AGL AND APPROXIMATELY 35 KNOTS AIRSPEED, A TOTAL LOSS OF POWER OCCURRED. THE PILOT INITIATED AN AUTOROTATION TO THE GRASS ABEAM A RUNWAY. DURING THE FLARE THE PILOT DID NOT MAINTAIN ADEQUATE ROTOR RPM AND THE HELICOPTER LANDED HARD, COLLAPSING THE SKID GEAR AND SEVERING THE TAIL BOOM. THE ENGINE WAS TEST RUN AT THE MANUFACTURER'S FACILITY WITH NO ANOMALIES NOTED. ADDITIONAL TESTS ON THE ENGINE'S RELATED SYSTEMS DID NOT REVEAL THE REASON FOR THE LOSS OF POWER.
Probable cause
THE PILOT'S FAILURE TO MAINTAIN ADEQUATE ROTOR RPM DURING AUTOROTATION. FACTORS WERE THE TAILWIND AND THE POWER LOSS FOR UNDETERMINED REASONS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW92LA199
- Event ID
- 20001211X15408
- Case number
- FTW92LA199
- 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: 46ff345483b9b04a5af8f956e3d2ecacb7019f22e61fecfa1e9010d998ec6232; retrieved 2026-09-21T23:11:16.607Z.