ERA12LA477 · Hughes 269C
Hughes 269C · Accident: loss of control in flight while maneuvering
From St. Petersburg, FL to St. Petersburg, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA12LA477
- 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
- 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
- N9679F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From St. Petersburg, FLTo St. Petersburg, FL
- 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
- Maneuvering · hover
- 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 control in flight
- 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 systems
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to the pilot, the helicopter's last annual inspection had been completed 12 years prior to the accident. On the day of the accident, he decided to fly it to lubricate the parts. After liftoff, he brought the helicopter to a hover about 25 feet in the air and initiated some pedal turns. The nose of the helicopter then began to drift toward the right. He applied left pedal but the helicopter didn’t respond. The helicopter then circled 6 to 8 times, so the pilot lowered the collective, and the helicopter impacted the ground on the left skid, struck a fence, and then rolled over on its left side.
However, according to witnesses, the helicopter was about 50 feet in the air, did not circle but moved side to side, and was described as being out of control before it impacted the ground. Total flight time from liftoff to impact was about 2 minutes in duration. Postaccident examination did not reveal any preimpact failures or malfunctions of the helicopter which would have precluded normal operation. However, the cyclic control system would not move freely because the lateral friction control was tightened down. Once the lateral friction control was released, lateral movement of the cyclic control was possible.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to assure that the lateral friction control was released prior to flight.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA12LA477
- Event ID
- 20120724X11006
- Case number
- ERA12LA477
- 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: 2f5b86ad1a30d505f5c5170f9771d3a5d2395ac25f417a602452946c0cfe43c9; retrieved 2026-09-15T19:03:58.489Z.