MIA07FA098 · Hughes 369A
Hughes 369A · Accident: airframe, component or system failure en route
From Merkel Field Sylacauga Municipal Airport (SCD) to Northwest Alabama Regional Airport (MSL)
Event
- NTSB case
- MIA07FA098
- 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
- 1 · 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 369A
- 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
- N468WE
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Merkel Field Sylacauga Municipal Airport (SCD), Sylacauga, ALTo Northwest Alabama Regional Airport (MSL), Muscle, AL
- 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 · 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
- 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
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
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 recently purchased the helicopter through an aircraft broker. An annual inspection was done prior to the sale, at which time a main rotor blade was replaced and the other three were overhauled. The accident occurred on the fourth flight of the day of a multiple-leg cross-country flight. The flight departed from one of several planned fuel stops. No flight plan was filed, and searchers found the fire- and impact-damaged wreckage 2 days later in wooded terrain. Three of the four main rotor blades were found separated from the main rotor hub with one of the blades located about 1,100 feet from the main wreckage, consistent with an in-flight separation. A National Transportation Safety Board materials engineer examined the blade retention strap assemblies, and no preexisting material issues were identified to explain why one or more main rotor blades could have separated prior to impact.
Probable cause
The separation of a main rotor blade from its tension torsion bar for an undetermined reason.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record MIA07FA098
- Event ID
- 20070605X00681
- Case number
- MIA07FA098
- 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: b9870876bca33bfd8c89358e717250d88e5982373efd8d07102cf04eefe5bbe4; retrieved 2026-09-20T16:37:43.203Z.