WPR11LA462 · Hughes 269C UNDESIGNAT
Hughes 269C UNDESIGNAT · Accident: loss of engine power (total) during autorotation
From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ) to McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's aircraft involved. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11LA462
- 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 269C UNDESIGNAT Narrative disagrees
- 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
- N1088Y
- Operator
- Allen D. Hopkins · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ), Carlsbad, CATo McClellan-Palomar Airport (CRQ), Carlsbad, CA
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The flight instructor stated that he initiated the autorotation demonstration maneuver between 600 to 700 feet above ground level (agl) by rolling off the throttle and splitting the needles. About 300 feet agl, he initiated the recovery; however, he then noticed that the engine rpm was near zero and that the engine would not respond to throttle input. About 100 feet agl, the airspeed was about 40 knots, and the rotor rpm was on the low side of the green arc. The helicopter subsequently landed hard, slid forward, rolled over, and came to rest on its right side. A postaccident examination revealed no anomalies with the engine that would have precluded normal operation. The company chief pilot stated that, shortly after the instructor was hired, he showed the instructor the proper technique for teaching autorotations, which did not include rolling the throttle off in flight, a procedure that could result in engine stoppage. About 4 months after the accident, the Federal Aviation Administration issued Special Airworthiness Bulletin SW-12-12, “Conducting Engine-Failure Simulation in Helicopters with Reciprocating Engines.” The bulletin cautions owners and operators of Schweizer 269C and 269C-1 helicopters to avoid throttle chops to full idle in order to minimize the possibility of engine stoppage.
Probable cause
The flight instructor’s failure to follow the proper procedure while demonstrating a practice autorotation, which resulted in a total loss of engine power and subsequent hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR11LA462
- Event ID
- 20110923X41323
- Case number
- WPR11LA462
- 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: 3c059fd94cbd0d3fddad7aacb022df4547652ee802987a09e9e5c4faff6c8406; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:46:21.135Z.