SEA06LA135 · Hughes 369D
Camera Copters Hughes 369D · Accident: airframe, component or system failure while maneuvering
From Canyonlands Regional Airport (CNY) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- SEA06LA135
- 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 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
- N369PB
- Operator
- Camera Copters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Canyonlands Regional Airport (CNY), Moab, UTTo 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
- 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
- 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
- Other maintenance personnel › Maintenance, service bulletin/letter, not complied with
- Rotorcraft flight control system, collective trim › Failure
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 reported that he was maneuvering the helicopter at an altitude of about 200 feet agl conducting filming operations when he heard a loud bang after which the collective control felt "mushy" and "as if there was no positive control." He initiated a precautionary power on autorotative landing. The helicopter touched down on top of a ridgeline and then slid approximately 50 to 75 feet into a gully area, coming to rest in a 40 to 45 degree nose down attitude. During the landing, the main rotor contacted and severed the tail boom. Examination of the helicopter revealed that the collective bungee support bracket was fractured. A service information notice issued by the helicopter's manufacturer on March 7, 1980, called for a one time inspection of the collective bungee support bracket to ensure that thickness of the machine web surface in the aft lug area of the bracket was 0.065 inch or more. Excerpts from the helicopter's maintenance records provided by the pilot indicated that the service information notice was complied with prior to June 25, 1997. Examination of the fractured bracket revealed that the web thickness varied from 0.036 to 0.052 inch, which was below the minimum thickness requirement. Additionally, a hole that would have been drilled in the bracket during compliance with the service information notice was not present, indicating the procedure was not performed.
Probable cause
The failure of the collective bungee support bracket due to non-compliance with a service information notice, which resulted in the pilot executing a precautionary autorotative landing. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record SEA06LA135
- Event ID
- 20060711X00915
- Case number
- SEA06LA135
- 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: 636acc2c19efb531f2e5ce467cac7afdff3e882d19591b3b9a7ca307ec1dea79; retrieved 2026-09-22T04:42:47.699Z.