CHI04LA030 · Hughes 269B
Hughes 269B · Accident: in flight collision with terrain/water while maneuvering
From Rising Sun, IN to Bowman Field (LOU)
Event
- NTSB case
- CHI04LA030
- 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 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
- N1093D
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rising Sun, INTo Bowman Field (LOU), Louisville, KY
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Passenger › Aircraft control, not maintained
- Passenger › Altitude/clearance, not maintained
- Pilot in command › In-flight planning/decision, improper
- Pilot in command › Remedial action, inadequate
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 was substantially damaged when it impacted a river. The passenger in the helicopter stated to law enforcement officers that she was at the controls of the helicopter at the time of the accident when something went wrong, and the helicopter crashed into the water. The pilot stated that he was attempting to take pictures and while he was moving the helicopter and turning away from the wind he lost power due to lack of airspeed and fell into the river. The pilot told the officer that he had about 160 hours of flight time. The pilot stated that he was at the controls and that the passenger had been at the controls earlier, but the passenger was not at the controls at the time of the accident. Two witnesses reported that the helicopter came over a trees and then dropped down toward the water, and subsequently impacted the water. The witnesses reported that the helicopter sounded normal and no unusual sounds were heard. No pre-impact defects were found with respect to the helicopter.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper in-flight decision to allow the passenger to manipulate the aircraft flight controls, his failure to maintain altitude/clearance from the river, and his inadequate remedial action. A related factor was the low altitude.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CHI04LA030
- Event ID
- 20031117X01912
- Case number
- CHI04LA030
- 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: d8de792d323ade1d9b251d6a3b21c2c1b739a1ba0a2e1cf6e06382b44a895c70; retrieved 2026-09-21T19:19:27.844Z.