IAD01TA051 · Hughes 369D
Hughes 369D · Accident: hard landing
From Louisville, KY (no airport) to Taylorsville, KY (no airport)
Event
- NTSB case
- IAD01TA051
- 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
- N50AP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Louisville, KY (no airport)To Taylorsville, KY (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
- Landing
- 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(cfi) › Aircraft control, inadequate
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor and commercial pilot were practicing autorotations. On the fourth maneuver, the flight instructor was demonstrating an autorotation that would terminate with a full touchdown. The flight instructor reported that he began the maneuver at 800 feet agl, and initiated the deceleration about 50 feet agl. About 10-15 feet agl, he leveled the helicopter and began the descent to touchdown. When collective was to be applied, the pilot felt a forward pressure on the cyclic, and a tendency for the helicopter to nose down. He reacted by centering the cyclic. When the collective reached 50 percent of travel, the pilot realized that the rate of descent was greater than normal. He applied more collective and advanced the throttle in an attempt minimize the rate of descent, but landed hard in a tail low attitude. The accident was videotaped by a witness. Review of the videotape revealed that the helicopter appeared to stop its descent about 20-25 feet agl and assume a tail low attitude. The helicopter descended, landed on the tailskid, then the aft portion of the main landing gear skids. When the tailskid contacted the ground, the tail boom fractured. The tail assembly was then struck by a main rotor blade, and the helicopter rocked forward on the main landing gear skids, and the left strut failed. Examination of the helicopter revealed there were no mechanical deficiencies.
Probable cause
the flight instructor's inadequate aircraft control during a practice autorotation which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record IAD01TA051
- Event ID
- 20010504X00879
- Case number
- IAD01TA051
- 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: dd15c657c877a3dbb20bff3f6c7c417b40e4bf49831aff4c8f1ea76b6f96968e; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:58:15.999Z.