DFW07LA061 · Hughes 269A
Hughes 269A · Accident: loss of engine power en route
From Fulshear, TX to Fulshear, TX
Event
- NTSB case
- DFW07LA061
- 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
- N8503A
- Operator
- Orville Gaither
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fulshear, TXTo Fulshear, TX
- 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 · climb to cruise
- 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
- 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
- Reason for occurrence undetermined
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The owner of the helicopter reported that a cylinder had been replaced and he asked a pilot to conduct a short test flight after he completed the cylinder "brake-in" process. The pilot reported that the helicopter experience a large yaw and lost power while at 500 feet above the ground. The pilot was forced to clear ground obstacles during the autorotation which resulted in a loss of main rotor rpm. The helicopter fell vertically from 50-feet, resulting in a hard landing. There was no fire. All three main rotor blades were destroyed and the tail boom separated from the airframe. Ten gallons of aviation fuel were drained from the helicopter prior to recovery. No discrepancies were found with the airframe of the engine that could have contributed to the reported loss of engine power. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined. The pilot held a private pilot certificate, and had accumulated a total of 1,200-hours, with 80-hours in rotorcraft, of which 40-hours were in the same make and model helicopter. Weather was not a factor.
Probable cause
The loss of engine power for undetermined reasons. A contributing factor was the lack of suitable terrain for the forced landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record DFW07LA061
- Event ID
- 20070223X00218
- Case number
- DFW07LA061
- 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: 9a028fd66b30b2e9e2a6b2a96edc1a987f352ddee5ee61295c2f9e122f922d8c; retrieved 2026-09-21T18:37:05.043Z.