CHI87LA098 · Hughes 269B
Sportflight Helicopter Hughes 269B · Accident: hard landing
From Aurora Municipal Airport (ARR) to Elkhart Municipal Airport (EKM)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI87LA098
- 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 269B
- 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
- N9522F
- Operator
- Sportflight Helicopter
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Aurora Municipal Airport (ARR), Aurora, ILTo Elkhart Municipal Airport (EKM), Elkhart, IN
- 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
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 › Fuel consumption calculations, inadequate
- Pilot in command › Proper descent rate, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, delayed
- Pilot in command › Rotor RPM, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
ACCORDING TO THE PLT, AFTER DEPARTURE FROM AURORA MUNICIPAL AIRPORT, HE LANDED AT AN AIRFIELD WEST OF ELGIN, ILLINOIS AND PICKED UP THE TWO PASSENGERS. THE PLT STATED THAT HE THEN DEPARTED FOR ELKHART, INDIANA. ACCORDING TO AN INDIANA STATE POLICE AIRCRAFT ACCIDENT REPORT, WHILE EN ROUTE TO ELKHART, THE PLT OBSERVED AN ILLUMINATED LOW FUEL LIGHT AND DECIDED TO MAKE A PRECAUTIONARY LANDING IN AN OPEN FIELD, ABOUT THREE MILES SOUTHWEST OF MICHIANA REGIONAL AIRPORT, SOUTH BEND, INDIANA. THE REPORT FURTHER STATES THAT THE GAS TANK OF THE ACFT WAS FOUND EMPTY. ACCORDING TO THE PLT, 'SUBSTANTIAL ACFT DAMAGE OCCURRED DURING FLARE AND SUBSEQUENT HARD LANDING.'
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI87LA098
- Event ID
- 20001213X30408
- Case number
- CHI87LA098
- 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: 2ae7665f018eb363f54de778918a060af91a4dd5e5fbd806623bea6294fa29c9; retrieved 2026-09-23T13:25:11.332Z.