SEA05CA168 · Hughes 269A
Hughes 269A · Accident: on ground/water collision with terrain/water during landing
From Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport (KMFR) to Ashland Municipal Airport Sumner Parker Field (S03)
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA05CA168
- 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 269A
- 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
- N488MC
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Rogue Valley International-Medford Airport (KMFR), Medford, ORTo Ashland Municipal Airport Sumner Parker Field (S03), Ashland, OR
- 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 · landing roll
- 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
- On ground/water 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
- Dual student › Directional control, not possible
- Pilot in command(cfi) › Planning/decision, improper
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
After arriving at Ashland Airport, the dual-student and the instructor performed hovering exercises, hovering autorotations, and hovering loss of tail rotor effectiveness (LTE) maneuvers. They next performed some stuck-pedal exercises on a parallel taxiway, and then performed a series of run-on landings to runway 30. The last maneuver was a full-down autorotation to runway 30. The maneuver was initiated about 300 feet above ground level (agl), and the flare was started about 50 feet agl. According to both the student and the instructor, the flare and touchdown were performed correctly, and were uneventful. The helicopter then slid directly down the runway for about 150 feet, but just prior to coming to a normal stop (at about five knots), the left skid sank into some soft tar on the runway surface. The helicopter then veered abruptly to the left, and rolled over onto its right side. When the occupants got out of the helicopter, they found that the tar in the area where the aircraft rolled over was thick, soft, and sticky. In a post accident interview, both the student and the instructor said that when they departed Medford for Ashland, they were not aware that the Ashland Airport runway surface was made of chip-seal (a combination of tar and crushed rock). According to the instructor, although the runway surface did not seem to present any problem during the run-on landings, he did notice that when they came around the pattern for subsequent maneuvers that he could see imprints in the surface from the previous skid contacts. The instructor further noted that the temperature at the time of the accident was just over 90 degrees, and that on the previous two days the temperature had reached about 100 degrees. He also stated that the runway surface was inconsistent, in that some areas contained more rock in the composite, and some areas contained more tar in the composite.
Probable cause
The inability of the dual student to maintain directional control of the helicopter during the landing roll when the left skid sank into an area of thick, soft, sticky tar, and the instructor pilot's improper decision to perform a full-down autorotational landing to a surface which had already shown itself to be soft. Factors include a soft, sticky landing surface, and high temperature that contributed to the softening of the landing surface.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA05CA168
- Event ID
- 20050818X01280
- Case number
- SEA05CA168
- 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 2005-08-12.
- API snapshot SHA-256: 0a6209ec11e450383b574e3cb983ca11a82492375a826ab1ccf95b3fdc09d21c; retrieved 2026-09-22T05:29:50.060Z.