ANC24LA016 · Hughes 369D
Windward Aviation Hughes 369D · Accident: collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT) en route
From Kahului International Airport (PHOG) to Kahului International Airport (PHOG)
Event
- NTSB case
- ANC24LA016
- 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
- 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 369D
- 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
- N690WA
- Operator
- Windward Aviation
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Kahului International Airport (PHOG), Kahului, HITo Kahului International Airport (PHOG), Kahului, HI
- Aircraft age
- About 46 years (built 1978)
- 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
- En route
- 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
- Collision with terrain/object (non-CFIT)
- 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
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
- Personnel issues › Task performance
Approximate · Coordinates from the NTSB case API, which marks them as estimated or does not say; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot reported that after landing at a remote landing zone (LZ) to pick up a single passenger, the passenger loaded their gear in the aft right seat and secured it with a seatbelt. While enroute, the two occupants heard a “loud and violent bang” and the nose of the helicopter moved to the right and vibrations followed. The pilot looked back at the tail rotor, saw it was spinning freely, and confirmed the tail rotor drive train had failed. The pilot performed an autorotation to an open field. A post flight inspection revealed that the passenger’s rain pants were missing from the aft right seat. It was determined that the rain pants had exited the helicopter and impacted the tail rotor resulting in substantial damage to the fuselage, tail boom, horizontal stabilizer and tail rotor assembly and gearbox. The pilot stated that there were no preimpact mechanical malfunctions or failures with the helicopter that would have precluded normal operation.
Probable cause
The pilot’s failure to ensure the passenger’s gear was properly secured before departure.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record ANC24LA016
- Event ID
- 20240220193819
- Case number
- ANC24LA016
- 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, coordinates, 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: f535b273b2b1464845f1f9ee5380dbf2bae09e750960ac7de04870543a3aee21; retrieved 2026-09-16T18:31:33.932Z.