NYC90LA134 · Hughes 269A
B C Helicopter Hughes 269A · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while standing
From Sky Manor Airport (N40) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC90LA134
- 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
- N110ES
- Operator
- B C Helicopter
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Sky Manor Airport (N40), PITTSTOWN, NJTo 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
- Standing · idling rotors
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Landing gear, main gear shock absorbing strut › Life expired
- Maintenance › Inadequate
Approximate · Estimated position: the centre of Pittstown, NJ, the place the record names. Not the accident site.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT HAD JUST LANDED AFTER A SOLO HELICOPTER TRANSITION FLIGHT. AFTER TOUCHDOWN SHE LOWERED THE COLLECTIVE AND ROLLED OFF THE THROTTLE. THE HELICOPTER ENTERED GROUND RESONANCE AND WAS DESTROYED. POST-CRASH EXAMINATION SHOWED ONE OF THE LANDING GEAR DAMPERS HAD DRIED HYDRAULIC FLUID RESIDUE ON THE BOOT AND PISTON, AND HAD COLLAPSED. TWO OTHER LANDING GEAR DAMPERS WERE ABLE TO BE COMPRESSED BY HAND. ACCORDING TO SCHWEIZER ACFT CO., PROPERLY SERVICED AND MAINTAINED LANDING GEAR DAMPERS WILL NOT COLLAPSE DURING GROUND RESONANCE.
Probable cause
GROUND RESONANCE DUE TO INADEQUATE SERVICING AND MAINTENANCE OF THE LANDING GEAR DAMPERS.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC90LA134
- Event ID
- 20001212X23526
- Case number
- NYC90LA134
- 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: e172e83c4d90f1c0ca525ba4ac68ee3400cf45e442239c06ac74c1ba92571da9; retrieved 2026-09-21T23:51:07.757Z.