CEN13CA145 · Hughes 369HS
Hughes 369HS · Accident: loss of engine power (total) en route
From Canton, OH to James M. Cox Dayton International Airport (DAY)
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN13CA145
- 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 369HS
- 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
- N193M
- Operator
- Daniel Mills
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Canton, OHTo James M. Cox Dayton International Airport (DAY), Dayton, OH
- 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
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The private pilot said the helicopter's turbine engine lost power after flying through an area of moderate to heavy snow. The pilot entered an autorotation and applied excessive aft cyclic during the touchdown in a field, which caused the main rotor blades to flex down and sever the tailboom. Weather reported in the area included snow and freezing fog, with a temperature of 16 degrees F. The helicopter was equipped with an automatic engine re-ignition and engine failure warning system, which was required per the rotorcraft flight manual (RFM) for operation in falling or blowing snow. The pilot said this system was armed at the time of the engine failure and the engine-out warning light illuminated and an audible tone sounded before the power loss. The RFM also stated that flight into known icing conditions was prohibited and fuel had to meet anti-icing capability of JP-4 when operating at 40 degrees or less. A review of fueling records revealed that no anti-icing additive was added to the fuel. The pilot was aware of the icing conditions, but he continued the flight. Examination of the engine found no mechanical anomalies that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot's failure to comply with established cold weather operating procedures, which resulted in a total loss of engine power. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's excessive aft cyclic input during the landing flare, which resulted in main rotor blade contact with the tail boom.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN13CA145
- Event ID
- 20130129X52331
- Case number
- CEN13CA145
- 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, coordinates. 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: ed1cf047dfe710991e4f1483d5342e83f1494d54846fb1d8a2cd55c1735c4f42; retrieved 2026-09-15T20:51:37.345Z.