ERA09LA317 · Hughes 369D
Aerial Solutions Hughes 369D · Accident: loss of engine power (total) while maneuvering
From Greenville, VA to Greenville, VA
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09LA317
- 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
- N8356F
- Operator
- Aerial Solutions
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Greenville, VATo Greenville, VA
- 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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 · low-altitude flying
- Defining eventThe 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 (total)
- 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
- Aircraft › Aircraft power plant
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Following completion of aerial tree cutting near power lines, the pilot returned to the designated landing zone and, while maneuvering for landing after placing the saw on the ground, the engine experienced a loss of power. The pilot attempted to perform an autorotative landing but landed hard, causing substantial damage to the helicopter.
Postaccident inspection of the engine revealed one airfoil of the fourth-stage power turbine wheel fractured near the hub due to high-cycle fatigue that initiated on the pressure side of the airfoil at the trailing edge. No surface defects were noted along the root filet radius adjacent to the fracture initiation region. The enhanced fourth-stage power turbine wheel was manufactured in October 2006, installed into the turbine assembly, operated for 1,769 hours, then removed for a 1,750-hour inspection. The fourth-stage power turbine wheel remained installed in the turbine assembly at the completion of the inspection, and the turbine assembly was reinstalled onto the engine. At the time of failure, the wheel had accumulated approximately 2,690 hours since new and approximately 921 hours since the last 1,750-hour inspection was performed.
Since 2005, there have been four other fatigue failures of an airfoil of an enhanced fourth-stage turbine wheel. All other failures initiated at the trailing edge near the hub. In December 2006, Rolls-Royce developed an engine alert bulletin (CEB-A-1400) alerting owners and operators of the accident make and model engine to avoid steady state N2 speed between 75 to 88 percent above 85 shaft horsepower (shp). Additionally, Rolls-Royce reported that their research of failures of airfoils of the fourth stage power turbine revealed the possibility of a higher stress state in the airfoil at the trailing edge root than originally modeled. The stress, which occurs during engine start, results from thermal differentials in the airfoil geometry that produce a residual stress at the trailing edge root that can lead to a fatigue crack. Once a crack occurs, it can propagate in high-cycle fatigue followed by overload failure if the engine is operated in a steady state in the N2 speed avoidance range (75 to 88 percent N2) above 85 shp, as specified in CEB-A-1400.
Probable cause
The inadequate design of the fourth-stage turbine wheel, resulting in the fatigue failure of one airfoil and a subsequent loss of engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09LA317
- Event ID
- 20090602X83005
- Case number
- ERA09LA317
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
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. 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: c686b721ecee04d7f5773061ff93bb84e10c46c9d1872c04a26ee6bc2a37fb47; retrieved 2026-09-15T11:17:06.128Z.