IAD00LA052 · Hughes 269A
Hughes 269A · Accident: total loss of engine power (non-mechanical) en route
From Essex County Airport (CDW) to Ocean County Airport (MJX)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD00LA052
- 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
- N9014N
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Essex County Airport (CDW), Caldwell, NJTo Ocean County Airport (MJX), R.J. MILLER, NJ
- 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
- Total loss of engine power (non-mechanical)
- 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
- Fuel exhaustion; Tree(s)
- 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
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Pilot in command › Procedures/directives, not complied with
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Mansfield, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departure, the pilot did not visually check the fuel tank, and noted that the fuel gauge read 17-18 gallons. The pilot decided not to refuel and departed. About 60-minutes into the flight, the pilot stated the low fuel light illuminated, and the fuel gauge read 5 gallons. He then climbed from 400 to 800 feet, which took 4-minutes. After reaching 800 feet, the engine started to sputter and shortly after stopped producing power. The fuel gauge read empty. The pilot executed a forced landing to a clearing, struck pine trees, and rolled over onto its right side. Examination of the helicopter revealed that there was no fuel inside the fuel tank. According to the flight manual, the low fuel light will illuminate when there is one usable gallon of fuel left in the tank. It also stated that when the low fuel light illuminates, the pilot should land immediately. The pilot reported there were no mechanical deficiencies with the helicopter.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to comply with published emergency procedures. A factor in the accident was the pilot's inadequate preflight planning which resulted in a take-off with the inadequate amount of fuel for the flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD00LA052
- Event ID
- 20001212X21250
- Case number
- IAD00LA052
- 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: 3abfbeb2e0690b6b6ece72f61ceccf2dfd4ab437f72f761b169be301ab0ad1f7; retrieved 2026-09-21T20:11:44.207Z.