DEN99LA092 · Hughes 269A
Hughes 269A · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water during initial climb
From No airport to Laurel Municipal Airport (6S8)
Event
- NTSB case
- DEN99LA092
- 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
- N7052L
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From No airportTo Laurel Municipal Airport (6S8), Laurel, MT
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Aircraft performance, climb capability › Exceeded
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
An hour after landing in an open field (6,200 feet msl) near Parkman, Wyoming, in the Bighorn National Forest, the pilot performed a practice takeoff without his passenger to test the aircraft's performance. The helicopter hovered normally after effective translational lift was achieved, and he climbed out at 40 knots. Shortly after clearing a 75-foot ridge 100 to 150 yards from the takeoff field just after coming out of ground effect, the aircraft experienced a downdraft and subsequently began to lose altitude. The power required for the helicopter to climb was greater than the power available. The aircraft impacted the ground through 60 to 80 feet of trees, and came to rest in an inverted position. According to the pilot, there were no mechanical problems and the engine was running on impact. Density altitude at the time of the accident was calculated to be 7,578 feet. According to calculated weight and performance data, the gross weight of the aircraft at the time of departure was approximately 1,232 lbs. At an indicated airspeed of 35 knots, the maximum obstacle clearance height was calculated to be 75 feet, with a maximum distance of 800 feet.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate in-flight planning by exceeding the helicopter's performance climb capability. Factors were the downdraft encountered during initial climb following takeoff, and the high density altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DEN99LA092
- Event ID
- 20001212X18972
- Case number
- DEN99LA092
- 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: f2ae3f85bef665977638516124c8d1e3d29eae0874cc2c8de9980311fbe69d51; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:31:40.081Z.