CEN12CA031 · Hughes 269A
Hughes 269A · Accident: ground resonance while standing
From Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (FTW) to Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (FTW)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN12CA031
- 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
- N10375
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (FTW), Fort Worth, TXTo Fort Worth Meacham International Airport (FTW), Fort Worth, 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
- Standing · engine(s) operating
- 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
- Ground resonance
- 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
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The certified flight instructor (CFI) and pilot receiving instruction were practicing hovering autorotations on a taxiway. With the skids on the ground for about 20 seconds after completing a hovering autorotation and with the engine at 2,000 rpm, the helicopter began to vibrate and violently shake, consistent with ground resonance. The vibrations and shaking continued to increase and lasted about 15 to 30 seconds. After the shaking stopped, the CFI shut down the helicopter. A postaccident examination of the helicopter revealed that the tail rotor and gearbox separated, and the fuselage was bent and deformed. No preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter were noted that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The inadvertent entry into ground resonance after a hovering autorotation.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN12CA031
- Event ID
- 20111019X32039
- Case number
- CEN12CA031
- 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: a2375f1d49eef8532d5f02f2a4be1e6180da1512fc5f5efe892bebbb711d26a5; retrieved 2026-09-15T16:52:14.147Z.