SEA00FA038 · Hughes 269C
Hughes 269C · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water on approach
From Stark's Twin Oaks Airpark (7S3) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA00FA038
- 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 269C
- 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
- N9297F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Stark's Twin Oaks Airpark (7S3), STARKS TWIN OAK, ORTo 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
- 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
- Pilot in command › Proper descent rate, not attained
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot and pilot rated passenger were practicing a pinnacle approach, terminating to a hover, over a gravel pile in the confines of a rock quarry. The commercial pilot stated that during the transition to a hover the helicopter continued to settle and the aircraft's left skid collided with the top of the pile. The pilot added full collective and left cyclic without a notable response. The helicopter continued to roll to the right and down the embankment. After the accident, the pilot reported that a dynamic roll over had occurred. Examination of the helicopter and associated system components revealed no evidence of a mechanical malfunction or failure.
Probable cause
The pilots failure to arrest the helicopter's descent rate during a planned approach to a hover. Factors include uneven terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA00FA038
- Event ID
- 20001212X20430
- Case number
- SEA00FA038
- 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: c49791eade0dedaee7edcd7c90f6724b57c142767f3cf7597fd3ca1555bbf68d; retrieved 2026-09-22T13:22:23.814Z.