CHI01LA119 · Hughes 369D
Hughes 369D · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From Du Quoin, IL to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI01LA119
- 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
- N713HT
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Du Quoin, ILTo 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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 engine power
- 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 control, not maintained
- Pilot in command › Height/velocity curve, not complied with
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot said that he was using an aerial saw to side trim trees along a powerline right-of-way. The pilot said, "At the end of the tree line at approximately 150' (feet) agl (above ground level) I applied power to climb, immediately the low rotor rpm horn sounded. I tried to increase N2/Nr (engine and rotor rpm) with the governor 'beep switch' and checked N2/Nr. There was no response from trying to increase N2/Nr and N2/Nr was in the low 90's. I lowered the collective, released the saw and radioed my ground crew that the engine had stopped. At this point I had low airspeed, low N2/Nr and approximately 100' agl. I aimed the aircraft at an open field and tried to gain airspeed to attempt a running landing." The pilot said the helicopter "impacted the field in a near horizontal attitude." An examination of the helicopter at the accident site showed the helicopter resting on its left side in a corn stubble field approximately 300 feet south of east-west running power lines, and approximately 730 feet from a clearway of trees where the helicopter was cutting prior to the accident. An examination of the helicopter revealed no anomalies.
Probable cause
loss of engine power for undetermined reasons, the pilot operating the helicopter outside of the height-velocity curve, and the pilot's failure to maintain control of the helicopter during the emergency landing. Factors relating to the accident were the pilot's attempted run-on landing and his improper in-flight decision to not land immediately after experiencing the engine problem.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI01LA119
- Event ID
- 20010426X00816
- Case number
- CHI01LA119
- 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: 55b37f90a53b1a15fce6dade3ef58797cedca4820735fd625fec7985adc89cdb; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:58:51.327Z.