FTW01LA073 · Hughes 369D
Hughes 369D · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From Amarillo, TX (no airport) to Canadian, TX (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- FTW01LA073
- 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
- Unknown
- 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 369D
- 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
- N8356F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Amarillo, TX (no airport)To Canadian, TX (no airport)
- 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
- Maneuvering · hover out of ground effect
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Pilot in command › Directional control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Loss of tail rotor effectiveness, encountered
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot made an approach to a high hover due to the rough/uneven terrain. As the pilot was hovering the helicopter to a level area at 40 feet agl, the helicopter began to yaw to the right. The pilot stated that he hover taxied through his "rotor wash," and the helicopter encountered "loss of tail rotor effectiveness." The pilot increased collective in an attempt to takeoff, and the helicopter made "two quick revolutions." The pilot stated that he elected to land the helicopter instead of continuing with the takeoff due to power lines and rising terrain. The pilot initiated an autorotation, and the helicopter touched down on the soft ground while still rotating, collapsing the left landing skid. Subsequently, the tail rotor and main rotor blades struck the ground. The helicopter came to rest leaning toward its left side.
Probable cause
the helicopter's encounter with loss of tail rotor effectiveness while hovering out-of-ground effect, and the pilot's failure to maintain control. A contributing factor was the soft terrain condition.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record FTW01LA073
- Event ID
- 20010305X00542
- Case number
- FTW01LA073
- 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: 22ce0ffbec7532557ed9e625e39a6b3e24556e8332a2957b762c8918993a4e8f; retrieved 2026-09-22T12:07:58.507Z.