ERA09FA414 · Hughes 369 D
Utility Helicopters Hughes 369 D · Accident: hard landing during autorotation
From Franklin, PA to Franklin, PA
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA09FA414
- 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 369 D
- 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
- N61735
- Operator
- Utility Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Franklin, PATo Franklin, PA
- 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
- Autorotation
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Aircraft › Fluids/miscellaneous hardware
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The helicopter was proceeding to a nearby landing location with an external load of seismic monitoring equipment. Several individuals on the ground heard the pilot talking on their communication frequency. Most of the communication was inaudible; however, several witnesses heard the pilot say that he was "going into the tree[s]." The helicopter was located in an open area near the edge of a tree line. The wreckage was confined within the immediate crash area, except for the external load; which was located 281 feet away in the wooded area. The helicopter had come to rest upright. The main rotor and tail rotor blades exhibited little damage to the leading edges. Approximately three drops of fuel was located throughout the helicopter's fuel system, and no fuel was located in or around the helicopter. No evidence of precrash mechanical failure of the helicopter structure, flight controls, systems, or engine were found.
Probable cause
A loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion as a result of the pilot's fuel mismanagement.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA09FA414
- Event ID
- 20090722X34202
- Case number
- ERA09FA414
- 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: 1a16aee28dfa080b3f107c645ddd1fbd0550328cea6a4ad9dcf0f677d506854f; retrieved 2026-09-13T20:22:54.543Z.