LAX03FA134 · Hughes 269B
Hughes 269B · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water en route
From Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN) to Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN)
Event
- NTSB case
- LAX03FA134
- 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
- 2 · 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 269B
- Aircraft type
- Hughes 269
- 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
- N16133
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN), Auburn, CATo Auburn Municipal Airport (AUN), Auburn, CA
- 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
- En route · descent
- 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
- In flight collision with terrain/water
- 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
- Unknown › Flare, misjudged
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter impacted the ground at a high rate of descent during a local instructional flight. Some minutes prior to the accident, a witness on a farm about 3 miles from the accident site heard and observed the helicopter performing maneuvers consistent with multiple practice autorotations to a power recovery. The helicopter then flew off in the direction of the airport. Witnesses near the accident site observed the helicopter in level controlled flight about 500 feet above ground level flying in the direction of the airport. They observed the helicopter's nose drop and then it dove toward the ground and disappeared behind a tree line. These witnesses heard normal sounds coming from the engine. Ground scars and the wreckage exhibited evidence consistent with the helicopter colliding with the ground at a high rate of descent in a level upright attitude and rolling on its right side. The main rotor blades displayed evidence consistent with having flexed downward and slicing into the tail boom at a high rotational rate and a driven energy state. Other evidence in the drive train was consistent with engine rotation and power production. An airframe and engine inspection revealed no preimpact anomalies that would have precluded normal operation and functionality of the control system.
Probable cause
the misjudged flare maneuver by an unknown crewmember during a likely practice autorotation that resulted in an in-flight collision with terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record LAX03FA134
- Event ID
- 20030426X00576
- Case number
- LAX03FA134
- 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: local date, investigation status, coordinates. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date; the NTSB stores the UTC date 2003-04-11.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 1a89f080a550a4ec3914586ece6569b5273316b81d9b929bc87e3e854fe85b38; retrieved 2026-09-20T19:18:57.672Z.