LAX89LA246 · Hughes 269C
Hughes 269C · Accident: total loss of engine power (mechanical failure) en route
From Hilo International Airport (ITO) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX89LA246
- 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
- N58344
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Hilo International Airport (ITO), Hilo, HITo 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
- 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 (mechanical failure)
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, service bulletin/letter, disregarded
- Engine assembly, valve, exhaust › Failure, total
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE PILOT EXECUTED AN AUTOROTATION INTO HIGH VEGETATION AND TREES FOLLOWING AN ENGINE FAILURE. POST ACCIDENT EXAM OF THE ENGINE REVEALED THE NO. 2 CYLINDER EXHAUST VALVE FAILED. EXAMINATION OF THE ENGINE LOGBOOK REVEALED LYCOMING SERVICE BULLETIN 388A HAD NOT BEEN ACCOMPLISHED.
Probable cause
THE LOSS OF ENGINE POWER DUE TO THE FAILURE OF THE ENGINE EXHAUST VALVE IN THE NO. 2 CYLINDER AND THE DISREGARD OF THE LYCOMING SERVICE BULLETIN BY COMPANY MAINTENANCE PERSONNEL. CONTRIBUTING TO THE ACCIDENT WAS THE HIGH VEGETATION AND TREES LOCATED AT THE FORCED LANDING SITE.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX89LA246
- Event ID
- 20001213X28872
- Case number
- LAX89LA246
- 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 1989-07-25.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 784e362c0b3d3aa362b763b08b8e135bbe8f37158860800526ac7e277905df08; retrieved 2026-09-21T15:52:26.700Z.