ERA20LA071 · Hughes OH 6A
US Dept Of Agriculture Hughes OH 6A · Accident: loss of engine power (partial) while maneuvering
From Preston, GA to Southwest Georgia Regional Airport (ABY)
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA20LA071
- 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
- Government
- 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 OH 6A
- Aircraft type
- Hughes OH-6
- 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
- N6186U
- Operator
- US Dept Of Agriculture
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Preston, GATo Southwest Georgia Regional Airport (ABY), Albany, GA
- Aircraft age
- About 51 years (built 1969)
- 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
- Public Aircraft
- 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
- Loss of engine power (partial)
- 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
- Not determined › Not determined
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
During the flight to observe feral swine invading farm fields, the pilot noted a loss of engine power and rotor rpm. He maneuvered the helicopter away from trees for an autorotation to an open, plowed cornfield. During the landing on rough terrain, the helicopter nosed forward and the main rotor blades contacted the ground, resulting in substantial damage to the helicopter. A postaccident examination of the flight controls, drive train, fuel system, main rotor system, and tail rotor system did not reveal evidence of a preexisting mechanical malfunction or anomaly. The engine was removed and placed on a test stand; it ran normally for about 2 minutes before the run was concluded. A laboratory test of a fuel sample was unremarkable. The reason for the loss of engine power could not be determined.
Probable cause
A partial loss of engine power for reasons that could not be determined based on the available information.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA20LA071
- Event ID
- 20200108X75639
- Case number
- ERA20LA071
- 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: b069c70e245adb40a235f4b1faa457c86db5064d4e8080265ea3aaaf98e4db3f; retrieved 2026-09-16T10:54:02.734Z.