NYC02LA192 · Hughes 369A
Hughes 369A · Accident: airframe, component or system failure during initial climb
From Burtonsville, MD (no airport) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- NYC02LA192
- 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 369A
- 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
- N336SP
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Burtonsville, MD (no airport)To 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 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
- Initial climb
- 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
- Airframe, component or system failure
- 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
- Rotor drive system, tail rotor gearbox(90 deg) › Failure
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
About one minute after liftoff, on the helicopters first flight after an annual inspection, the pilot experienced a sudden shuttering of the fuselage, followed by a chip detector light and a loss of directional control. The helicopter began to turn to the left, and would not respond to anti-torque pedal input. As the helicopter neared the heliport, "everything in the cockpit lit up," and the pilot observed the rotor tachometer decrease below 96 percent. The engine then lost total power, and the pilot performed a forced landing to a reservoir. As the helicopter neared the water, the engine "ignited" again, and the helicopter began to rotate to the right. The pilot set the helicopter down on the water, where it rolled to the right, and sank. According to a manufacturer's report of the examination, no abnormalities were noted with the engine or its related components. Damage to the tailrotor drive system was consistent with sudden stoppage or gradual binding of the tailrotor gearbox. Review of the helicopters maintenance records revealed that the tailrotor swash-plate assembly, the tailrotor pitch bearings on both blades, and the tailrotor bellcrank bearing at the swash-plate, were replaced during an annual inspection completed 2 days prior to the accident; however, the component history of the tailrotor gearbox could not be determined.
Probable cause
The failure of the tailrotor gearbox for undetermined reasons.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record NYC02LA192
- Event ID
- 20021003X05262
- Case number
- NYC02LA192
- 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, coordinates. 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: 2635e398aa91b6ee04e60cc4be3db034ddd30778f3317b7f13f4326a0f7acb5e; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:37:06.179Z.