MIA00FA029 · Hughes 369HS
Hughes 369HS · Accident: in flight encounter with weather en route
From Montgomery Regional (Dannelly Field) Airport (MGM) to Bessemer, AL
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA00FA029
- 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
- 2 · 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
- Instrument 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
- N395WM
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Montgomery Regional (Dannelly Field) Airport (MGM), Montgomery, ALTo Bessemer, AL
- 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 · 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
- In flight encounter with weather
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Visual flight rules (VFR) flight into instrument meteorological conditions (IMC)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › VFR flight into imc, continued
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot called the FAA, Anniston FSS about 15 minutes before departure and requested a weather briefing for a flight from Montgomery to Birmingham. The pilot was told that there was an airmet in effect for instrument flight rules conditions from Birmingham northward and that visual flight rules flight was not recommended. The flight departed Montgomery at about 1855. About 1935, witnesses heard the helicopter flying from south to north at a low altitude, making ' a steady, loud, whining noise.' About 2-3 seconds later they heard a 'thump' crash sound and then heard no more sound from the helicopter. They went outside of their house and observed the fire from the wreckage of N395WM. The witnesses stated that at the time of the accident the weather was dark and slightly foggy. Post-crash examination of the wreckage showed the helicopter had impacted in a near nose down vertical descent, while on a 185-degree heading. All components of the helicopter, which are necessary for flight, were located on or around the main wreckage. A post-crash fire had consumed the fuselage of the helicopter. Examination of the remaining portions of the helicopter structure, flight controls, main and tail rotor systems, and engine showed no evidence of pre-crash failure or malfunction. Damage to the main rotor system and engine drive shaft was consistent with the engine and rotor system operating at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
The pilots continued visual flight rules flight into instrument meteorological conditions resulting in his becoming spatially disoriented and loosing control of the helicopter, which resulted in an uncontrolled descent and impact with the ground.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA00FA029
- Event ID
- 20001212X20135
- Case number
- MIA00FA029
- 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 1999-11-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 728b849385a9481965fdd6b3e0530e0ff042098327da22b6fa5784a525b23090; retrieved 2026-09-20T21:37:45.434Z.