WPR14LA340 · Hughes 269C
Hughes 269C · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) en route
From Harvey Field (S43) to Harvey Field (S43)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR14LA340
- 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
- N7432F
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Harvey Field (S43), Snohomish, WATo Harvey Field (S43), Snohomish, WA
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1976)
- 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 · descent
- 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 (partial)
- 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
- Tree(s)
- 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 commercial pilot was conducting a local, personal flight in the rented helicopter. The pilot reported that, while descending the helicopter from 5,000 ft and approaching 4,000 ft, he increased the collective and noticed that the engine was slowing down; he was unable to recover the engine rpm to a normal range. The helicopter continued to descend until the pilot entered an autorotation. The helicopter then impacted a tree and came to rest in a small stream. The pilot stated that he did not believe that the engine ever quit but that it did not produce enough power to continue flight.
Postaccident examination of the helicopter revealed that the throttle mount bracket was hanging by the throttle cable linkage and was not secured to the servo mount studs, which would have led to the loss of throttle movement for acceleration. The operator stated that the engine had been installed in the helicopter 10 flight hours before the accident. It is likely that maintenance personnel did not properly secure the throttle mount bracket during the engine installation, which led to the loss of throttle movement and inability to control engine power.
Probable cause
Maintenance personnel’s failure to secure the throttle mount bracket during a recent engine installation, which resulted in the loss of throttle movement and an inability to control engine power.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR14LA340
- Event ID
- 20140811X32733
- Case number
- WPR14LA340
- 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: 36d875e0ad6d7ebf9c4d8c8e83bf06f5abf998b08934aa66b34d67e4547df6f8; retrieved 2026-09-16T01:37:28.405Z.