LAX83FA420 · Hughes 369HS
Jaime Font & MBK Hughes 369HS · Accident: loss of control in flight en route
From Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA) to Oxnard Airport (OXR)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX83FA420
- 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
- 1 · 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Hughes 369HS
- Aircraft type
- Hughes 369
- 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
- N8500N
- Operator
- Jaime Font & MBK
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Santa Barbara Municipal Airport (SBA), Santa Barbara, CATo Oxnard Airport (OXR), Oxnard, CA
- 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
- Loss of control in flight
- 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
- Pilot in command › Aircraft handling, uncontrolled
- Pilot in command › Spatial disorientation
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
THE HELICOPTER WAS OBSERVED DESCENDING 'STRAIGHT DOWN' & 'NOSE FIRST.' THE WRECKAGE WAS LOCATED ABOUT 200 YDS OFFSHORE IN ABOUT 30 FT OF WATER. WITNESSES STATED THAT IT WAS DARK & HAZY. THEY WERE ABLE TO SEE THE ACFT LIGHTS, BUT NOT THE STARS. THE PLT DID NOT HOLD A ROTORCRAFT HELICOPTER RATING. ACCORDING TO ACQUAINTANCES, THE NIGHT OVER-WATER FLIGHT WAS HABITUAL FOR THE PLT, WHO FLEW BETWEEN HIS TWO BUSINESSES IN VENTURA, CA & GOLETA, CA.
Verbatim NTSB analysis from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX83FA420
- Event ID
- 20001214X44558
- Case number
- LAX83FA420
- 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: ea1a87bf4afb711db0058f604b935ef76d3427ab1535f96cc8ce9cfc984520ab; retrieved 2026-09-21T06:13:53.460Z.