ANC99LA092 · Hughes 269A
Hughes 269A · Accident: undershoot on approach
From Juneau International Airport (JNU) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC99LA092
- 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
- N8926F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Juneau International Airport (JNU), AKTo 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
- Approach
- 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
- Undershoot
- 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 › Planned approach, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Rotor RPM, not maintained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certificated commercial pilot said that he made a northerly approach to a 3,400 feet msl mountain top heliport. He said that as he approached his intended landing site, he increased collective pitch while slowing his approach airspeed, and the rotor rpm began to decay. The pilot stated that he was forced to hover over, and eventually touchdown on, an area of uneven terrain, about thirty feet short and downhill from his intended landing site. He said, in part: 'I was able to keep the toes of the skids on the uphill slope while trying to get my rpm back up. I rolled the throttle on and lowered the collective as much as I dared.' He said that in an attempt to reposition the helicopter, he increased collective pitch and applied left pedal input. The left skid impacted the ground, and the helicopter rolled over. The helicopter sustained substantial damage to the rotor system, fuselage, and tail boom. The pilot reported that weather conditions at the time of the accident consisted of clear skies, visibility unlimited, gusty winds from the southeast at 10 to 15 knots, and temperature about 70 degrees F.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to maintain rotor rpm, and an inadequately planned approach. A factor associated with the accident was a tailwind.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC99LA092
- Event ID
- 20001212X19135
- Case number
- ANC99LA092
- 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: 669a066248b6741d4f7fccd5fdd809cd10b7a1abfda070fd6d4c487cb1562871; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:28:19.498Z.