WPR15LA257 · Hughes 369HS
Whirlwide Helicopters Hughes 369HS · Accident: low altitude operation/event while maneuvering
From Manra Island, PO to Manra Island, PO
Narrative check · The NTSB narrative appears to contradict this record's location. Values are shown as recorded, not corrected; compare with the narrative.
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR15LA257
- 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
- Visual 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
- N9068F
- Operator
- Whirlwide Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Manra Island, POTo Manra Island, PO
- Aircraft age
- About 44 years (built 1971)
- 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
- 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
- Low altitude operation/event
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
According to an operator representative, the commercial pilot and passenger/spotter were conducting fish-spotting duties. The operator reported that, about 16 minutes after the helicopter departed from the fishing vessel, the fishing vessel's radio operator reported losing contact with the helicopter. Vessel personnel then located the helicopter upside down in the water and initiated rescue operations.
The passenger reported that "the helicopter went wrong in the air and started rolling over and fell into the water." The passenger evacuated the helicopter and was rescued shortly after. He reported that he saw that the pilot's life vest had inflated inside the helicopter and that the pilot was struggling to exit and then stopped moving. After the passenger was transported to a hospital, he was not available for further questioning. The pilot's personal life vest, which was equipped to self-inflate when submerged in water, likely prevented him from evacuating the helicopter as it rolled over. After the accident, the operator advised its pilots not to use this type of life vest and to use the company-issued flotation life vests.
The helicopter sank and was not recovered. The reason for the loss of helicopter control could not be determined.
Probable cause
A The loss of helicopter control for reasons that could not be determined asbecause the helicopter sank in the oceanwater and was not recovered.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR15LA257
- Event ID
- 20150903X44600
- Case number
- WPR15LA257
- 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: f32596ff077c2e2e1e87c9d5ad7abcaecefc53716b8a9bf6fea4324a2d95a6b1; retrieved 2026-09-14T21:30:00.863Z.