CEN20CA334 · Hughes 369 D
Hughes 369 D · Accident while maneuvering
From Delia, KS to Delia, KS
Event
- NTSB case
- CEN20CA334
- 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
- N104SU
- Operator
- Signature Utility
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Delia, KSTo Delia, KS
- Aircraft age
- About 43 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 · low-altitude flying
- 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
- Miscellaneous/other
- 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 propeller/rotor
- Environmental issues › Physical environment
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
While conducting an aerial tree-trimming flight with an external load aerial saw, the pilot heard a loud “thump” and felt a collision. A heavy vibration was felt, and the pilot landed in a nearby cornfield without further incident. Upon landing substantial damage was found to the main rotor blades with embedded pieces of tree bark and vegetation found in the blades. The pilot reported that there were no mechanical malfunctions that contributed to the accident. The aerial saw was suspended about 120 ft below the helicopter. The operator noted that this distance is normally adequate to prevent foreign object damage (FOD) to the main rotor blades.
Probable cause
Foreign object damage sustained to the main rotor blades due to aerial tree trimming.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record CEN20CA334
- Event ID
- 20200811X33852
- Case number
- CEN20CA334
- 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: f3a51074e4ca146bbb52eba4c5e630774be3245c3951459ce3c9c901641c9477; retrieved 2026-09-16T12:29:06.926Z.