ERA22LA180 · Hughes 269A
Tri County Rentals and Sales Hughes 269A · Accident: VFR encounter with IMC while maneuvering
From Cannon Creek Airpark (15FL) to Trenton, FL
Event
- NTSB case
- ERA22LA180
- 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
- Event fatalities
- Unknown
- 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
- Instrument Meteorological Cond
Hughes 269A
- Aircraft type
- Hughes 269
- 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
- N7057L
- Operator
- Tri County Rentals and Sales
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Cannon Creek Airpark (15FL), Lake City, FLTo Trenton, FL
- Aircraft age
- About 55 years (built 1967)
- 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
- 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
- VFR encounter with IMC
- 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
- Environmental issues › Conditions/weather/phenomena
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Experience/knowledge
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The weather when the non-instrument-rated helicopter pilot initiated the flight included a ceiling of 250 ft mean sea level (msl) and visibility of ½ mile, which corresponded to instrument meteorological conditions. After flying for 15 minutes, the helicopter “entered a wall of fog.” The pilot attempted to turn the helicopter around and return to an area of better visibility; however, the tail rotor impacted trees. The pilot did not realize that the helicopter was in a right turn and reduced engine power. The helicopter descended to ground in a bank, which resulted in substantial damage to the fuselage, tailboom, and rotor blades. The pilot reported no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation. According to the helicopter owner’s maintenance and flight manual, “instrument flight [is] prohibited.”
Probable cause
The non-instrument-rated pilot’s decision to fly a visual flight rules only helicopter in instrument meteorological conditions, which resulted in a collision with trees and terrain.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ERA22LA180
- Event ID
- 20220406104895
- Case number
- ERA22LA180
- 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: 2b1bec380662dd7a6534a83688dd7d3ec4a2cd2154b5d07f8510a5a52a01cd24; retrieved 2026-09-16T15:06:28.731Z.