SEA03LA058 · Hughes 369D
Hughes 369D · Accident: loss of engine power while maneuvering
From Central Park, WA to Taholah, WA
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA03LA058
- 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
- Not recorded
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
- N5225C
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Central Park, WATo Taholah, WA
- 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
- 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
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Fuel exhaustion
- 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
- Company maintenance personnel › Maintenance, inspection, inadequate
- Electrical system, electric wiring › Not secured
- Engine instruments, fuel quantity gage › Unreliable
- Fluid, fuel › Exhaustion
- Fuel system, fuel quantity float/sensor › Entangled
- Fuel system, low fuel warning light › Not operating
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the Hughes 369D helicopter had been engaged in logging operations for about an hour when the engine flamed out, and he executed a hard landing to a nearby road. Post-crash examination found no fuel within the fuel tank, and the fuel quantity sending float entangled in the unsecured start pump wiring preventing the float from registering anything less than about 120 pounds of fuel (about 60 pounds above the Low Fuel Warning light activation setting). The helicopter had undergone a 100-hour inspection just before the accident flight during which the fuel quantity sending unit had been replaced. The maintenance manual contained procedures including a caution to secure the start pump wiring to prevent entanglement with the float, but this caution was addressed only in the start pump replacement procedure of the manual and not included in the fuel quantity sending unit replacement procedures.
Probable cause
The entanglement of the fuel quantity sender float in the start pump wiring within the fuel tank as a result of the wiring not being properly secured. This rendered the fuel gauge inaccurate and the low fuel warning light inoperative which led to fuel exhaustion. The improper securing of the wiring was a result of unspecified maintenance personnel not identifying the unsecured condition. Contributing factors were the lack of adequate guidance in the maintenance manuals on inspection of the wiring and the low rotor RPM during the autorotation resulting in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA03LA058
- Event ID
- 20030411X00481
- Case number
- SEA03LA058
- 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: 8dc1fa55d5b98c5d28e40af0112310c768bf4d95bf98f77881b4516a7bc9ecab; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:31:01.761Z.