ERA16LA030 · Hughes 369D
Rotor Blade Hughes 369D · Accident: flight control system malfunction/failure en route
From Marion County Airport (MAO) to Marion County Airport (MAO)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA16LA030
- 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 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
- N920JP
- Operator
- Rotor Blade
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Marion County Airport (MAO), Mullins, SCTo Marion County Airport (MAO), Mullins, SC
- Aircraft age
- About 36 years (built 1979)
- 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 133: Rotorcraft Ext. Load
- 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
- Flight control system malfunction/failure
- 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
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot of the helicopter was trimming trees on a power line right-of-way when the externally-mounted saw blades jammed. He climbed the helicopter out of the area and elected to return to the landing zone (LZ) to have the saw blades cleared. As he began a forward transition directly to the LZ, the helicopter yawed to the right. He initially corrected the situation with left pedal inputs. While maintaining a heading into the wind, he felt a "thump" and heard a "pop" sound, and the helicopter began to spin to the right out of control. The engine continued to run throughout the event. The helicopter settled into trees as the pilot attempted to cushion the landing with collective control inputs. The helicopter subsequently impacted the ground.
An examination of the wreckage revealed a spiral fracture in the tail rotor control torque tube that connected the left and right seat pedals. Metallurgical examination of the torque tube revealed that it failed in overload due to torsional stresses. A design review by the helicopter manufacturer's engineering department revealed that the torque tube met all airworthiness standards and design criteria.
It was apparent that, based on the pilot's comments and the fracture characteristics of the torque tube, it fractured in flight, immediately before the loss of helicopter control. Although no airframe or foreign obstructions were found in the tail rotor control system, it is possible that a momentary jam existed, though the source could not be determined despite a thorough examination of the wreckage. Although the tail rotor pitch control was replaced about 25 hours of time in service before the accident, and a tail rotor control rigging check was required at that time, aircraft damage prevented an evaluation of the tail rotor control rigging condition at the time of the accident.
Probable cause
A momentary jam in the tail rotor control system from an undetermined source, resulting in a torsional fracture of the tail rotor control torque tube and a loss of helicopter control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA16LA030
- Event ID
- 20151102X41519
- Case number
- ERA16LA030
- 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: 09454a8ea8fe7a43b8a8405a76bc6a5fb311148fa6c4cffc65babf4290966ba8; retrieved 2026-09-16T02:56:20.793Z.