FTW00LA048 · Hughes 269A
Hughes 269A · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Flint, TX (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW00LA048
- 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
- N575PF
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Flint, TX (no airport)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
- Maneuvering
- 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 control in flight
- 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 › Tail rotor effectiveness, not possible
- Pilot in command › Vortex ring state, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to the accident, the helicopter was flying on an easterly heading in level flight at approximately 20 knots while making shallow turns following a creek bed. The pilot reported that the helicopter lost all of its lift and power and started descending toward the trees. The pilot added that the anti-torque pedals were ineffective and the helicopter was spinning to the right prior to impact with the trees. Minor repairs were made to the engine in order to run the engine on the helicopter. The engine was started and operated twice within the 1300 to 2500 RPM range for 18 minutes. A representative of the engine manufacturer reported 'no pre-existing engine deficiencies were noted and the investigation did not produce any evidence that the engine was not capable of operating and producing power at the time of the accident.' The conditions at the time of the accident were found to be conducive to the formation of a tail rotor vortex ring state.
Probable cause
The loss of tail rotor effectiveness as a result of tail rotor vortex ring state.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW00LA048
- Event ID
- 20001212X20243
- Case number
- FTW00LA048
- 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: 97fbf79ec368c837969010f02775ccb5f332a8e651b8874dbe4e391c55e7f8a9; retrieved 2026-09-21T10:44:59.333Z.