WPR18LA226 · Hughes 369 D
Western Helicopters Hughes 369 D · Accident: hard landing during autorotation
From Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL) to an unrecorded destination
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR18LA226
- 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
- N105JL
- Operator
- Western Helicopters
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Riverside Municipal Airport (RAL), Riverside, CATo not recorded
- Aircraft age
- About 38 years (built 1980)
- 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
- Autorotation
- 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
- Hard landing
- 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 oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Psychological
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot receiving instruction was performing a full-touchdown, 180° autorotation when the instructor noted that the helicopter was going to be short of the intended landing zone and advanced the throttle to initiate a power recovery. The helicopter continued to descend and landed hard and rolled over, resulting in substantial damage. The instructor reported no mechanical malfunctions with the helicopter or engine that would have precluded normal operation. It is likely that the instructor’s delayed response to the helicopter’s excessive rate of descent resulted in the hard landing.
After egressing the helicopter, the instructor noted that the pilot receiving instruction had been ejected from the helicopter during the accident sequence. Examination of the restraint systems revealed that the cotter pins for the hook-end fitting that attached to the airframe seat belt fittings had not been installed. The centrifugal force generated by the rotation of the helicopter during the accident sequence was likely sufficient for the hook-end fitting, void of the cotter pin, to separate from the seat belt fitting, which then resulted in the student being ejected from the helicopter. As a result of the accident, the manufacturer issued a mandatory service bulletin requiring the installation of cotter pins in the seat belt assemblies.
Probable cause
The instructor’s delayed remedial action to an excessive descent rate during a simulated autorotation, which resulted in a hard landing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR18LA226
- Event ID
- 20180817X74952
- Case number
- WPR18LA226
- 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, cause areas. 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: 2c0326043bff1b428b5d55a7e53148a4fa51128da5bd435d08dafdd5750ad29f; retrieved 2026-09-16T08:06:42.167Z.