ERA18LA091 · Hughes 369 D
High Line Helicopters Hughes 369 D · Accident: external load event (Rotorcraft) while maneuvering
From San Juan, PR to San Juan, PR
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA18LA091
- 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 369 D
- 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
- N571HH
- Operator
- High Line Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From San Juan, PRTo San Juan, PR
- Aircraft age
- About 41 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 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
- Maneuvering · hover
- 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
- External load event (Rotorcraft)
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- None
Cause areas
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The commercial pilot was conducting helicopter operations to support electrical workers on utility towers. The support included lifting ladders and other equipment with an open-end grapple and lifting ladders with electrical workers (linemen) on them with an A-frame attachment. At the time of the accident, the helicopter was attempting to lift a ladder with a lineman on it using a grapple. The ladder became bound, and the helicopter pilot descended to lower the ladder back on the static arm. The ladder became free of both the grapple and static arm, which resulted in the ladder falling to the ground with the lineman on it, causing a serious injury to the lineman.
Lifting workers with an open-end grapple versus an A-frame attachment was contrary to company policy and Federal Aviation Regulation 27.865(c)(2) because the grapple does not protect against falls. The pilot reported that he was using a grapple at the time of the accident because he thought that he was only lifting the ladder. However, video recorded by the accident lineman earlier that day revealed that the helicopter pilot had previously used a grapple to move a ladder with the lineman on it and that the lineman allowed this situation to happen. Specifically, the video showed the accident lineman giving hand signals to the helicopter pilot while the lineman was on a ladder and then the helicopter lifting the ladder with a grapple so that the ladder could be repositioned to a different location on the utility tower. The pilot and lineman likely continued this practice at the time of the accident. Bee nests at the job site required the linemen to wear bee suits, which might have degraded their ability to clearly communicate, verbally and with head and hand signals, with the helicopter pilot.
Probable cause
The helicopter pilot's improper decision to use an open-end grapple, instead of an A-frame attachment, to lift and move a ladder with a lineman on it and the lineman's improper decision to be lifted on a ladder via an open-end grapple, which were contrary to company policy and the Federal Aviation Regulations.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA18LA091
- Event ID
- 20180226X85030
- Case number
- ERA18LA091
- 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, damage. 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: 995c6f40ab36264a50df52001d199a0596f743edf85506d81421139ce0c4da5e; retrieved 2026-09-16T06:31:48.563Z.