Hughes 369HS crash near Coral Ocean Point, Kobleville, Saipan, Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands

The helicopter was on a local sightseeing flight and approaching the Macaw helipad at the Coral Ocean Point Hotel, on a bluff above a golf course. About 100 yards out at 150 feet the pilot felt a twitch in the nose and heard the rpm decaying as the engine spooled down. He entered an autorotation, turned right to avoid upsloping terrain and touched down on a practice putting green. The helicopter bounced, the landing gear collapsed, the tail rotor struck the ground, the main rotor severed the tail boom and it came to rest on its right side. The pilot and four passengers suffered minor injuries. Allison and Allied Signal had issued service bulletins in November 1993 requiring the beryllium copper fuel control bellows to be replaced with a stainless steel Inconel assembly at the next overhaul. The fuel control was overhauled on 22 April 1997 with the compliance form marked NA against that bulletin, and the unit with the old bellows was refitted on 1 October at 2,247.1 engine hours. The engine had run 39.5 hours more at the time of the accident. The aggregator records the damage as substantial while the report describes the helicopter as destroyed. NTSB report LAX98LA053. Coordinates are approximate to Coral Ocean Point.