ERA12CA119 · Hughes 369D
Air #2 Hughes 369D · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC en route
From DXX · Knoxville, TN to Tri-Cities Regional TN/VA Airport (KTRI)
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's departure or destination. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12CA119
- 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
- Instrument 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
- N500TN
- Operator
- Air 2
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route Narrative disagrees
- From DXX · Knoxville, TNTo Tri-Cities Regional TN/VA Airport (KTRI), Blountville, TN
- 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
- 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- Also codedOther events the NTSB coded in the sequence, such as a wire strike after a loss of power. Flight Findings uses them for its kinds of event. Glossary
- Wire
- 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 › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
Prior to departure on a positioning flight, the pilot checked the weather and determined that visual meteorological conditions existed at both his departure and destination airports. However, while the pilot was following a highway in cruise flight at 400 feet above ground level, the ceiling rapidly became lower, and the pilot encountered instrument meteorological conditions. Moments later, while cruising at an airspeed of 65 knots, the pilot saw marker balls, which indicated that power lines were directly in front of the helicopter. The pilot lowered the collective and entered a right diving turn in order to avoid the wires, but one of the main rotor blades made contact. The rotor speed remained within limits, but the helicopter began to vibrate, so the pilot decided to land in a nearby field. Postaccident examination of the helicopter revealed that the main rotor blade that had made contact with the power line was substantially damaged.
Probable cause
The pilot's improper decision to continue a visual flight into instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in a wire strike.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12CA119
- Event ID
- 20111222X14445
- Case number
- ERA12CA119
- 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: afc990a81dca6dd5744bc19d75b146167eb05a865094efd18023f661e8146380; retrieved 2026-09-15T17:01:13.564Z.