ERA15FA178 · Hughes 369D
Haverfield International Hughes 369D · Accident: loss of visual reference en route
From Roscoe Turner Airport (CRX) to Scottsboro Municipal Word Field (4A6)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA15FA178
- 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
- 1 · 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
- N555JC
- Operator
- Haverfield International
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Roscoe Turner Airport (CRX), Corinth, MSTo Scottsboro Municipal Word Field (4A6), Scottsboro, AL
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1977)
- 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 · cruise
- 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 visual reference
- 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 › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot of the helicopter positioning flight delayed the takeoff for inclement weather to pass. However, about 1/2 hour after taking off, the helicopter encountered rain, fog, and low-visibility, gray-lighting conditions. The helicopter approached a 1-mile wide river, landed briefly onshore, then took off again and began a low-altitude crossing while paralleling a bridge. The helicopter was observed at an estimated 25 feet above the river before it began descending at a 10- to 15-degree angle into the water about mid-way through the crossing. It impacted the water nose-low, left side down, at a sufficient speed for the witness to see the tail "kick over" the main rotor blades and snap off. There were no onboard recording devices to confirm what occurred. No preexisting anomalies were found with the helicopter, and no medical issues were identified that would have affected the pilot's performance. The reason that the pilot landed before crossing the river could not be determined. Although the pilot's attention could have been momentarily diverted, it was more likely that the rainy, gray, reduced-visibility conditions resulted in low altitude spatial disorientation.
Probable cause
The pilot's spatial disorientation during a low-level river crossing in rainy, gray, reduced visibility meteorological conditions, which resulted in the helicopter's subsequent descent and impact with the water. Contributing to the accident was the pilot's decision to attempt the low-level crossing under those meteorological conditions.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA15FA178
- Event ID
- 20150407X12857
- Case number
- ERA15FA178
- 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: 64371524cf939acafa3bf190f9d4239f5a8062e11eccc75781a7f19a6998fe07; retrieved 2026-09-14T17:34:39.620Z.