A US Navy Sikorsky MH-53E Sea Dragon crashed off a Norfolk Virginia beach, killing one of five aboard. The helicopter was assigned to Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron Fourteen.
Three were injured and hospitalized at at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital. A rescue team is searching for one crewman who is still missing.
The USAF Pavehawk Sikorsky HH-60G that crashed on January 7 2013 at about 19:00 GMT on a training flight in Marshland near Cley-Next-The-Sea, Norfolk in the UK during training exercises transporting munitions, killed the crew of four aboard. The helicopter impacted in a nature reserve.
A second helicopter flew in as a rescue unit, but there were no survivors. Local witnesses heard and saw the helicopter flying low. It was initially believed the helicopter had ditched in the North Sea. No one on the ground was injured.
The names of the victims have been released: Capt Christopher S. Stover, Capt Sean M. Ruane, Technical Sergeant Dale E. Mathews and Staff Sergeant Afton M. Ponce. The commander of their unit said that Captains Stover and Ruane were pilots, while Tech. Sgt. Mathews and SSgt Ponce were acting as special mission aviators and “The Liberty Wing feels as though it has lost members of its family, and we stand by to support one another and these airmen’s families during this difficult time.”
An investigation is underway.
A Canadair CL-600 that burst into flames off the right side of the runway on its second go-round after it veered and flipped off Aspen’s challenging mountain-surrounded runway was registered to the Bank of Utah in Salt Lake City and flown from Tucson. The crash killed the Mexican co-pilot Sergio Carranza Brabata. The Mexican PIC Pilot Miguel Henriqez and passenger Moises Carranza survived with injuries. Both were hospitalized at Aspen Valley Hospital. Everyone aboard was a pilot.
The crash occurred at at 12:22 p.m in ten degree weather and gusty winds; it had been snowing in the area but not at the airport.
A crop-duster crashed in Lagos Formosa in Brazil.
The Embraer EMB-201A Ipanema owned by ENAGRI EMPR.NAC.DE AV.AGRICOLA LTDA was at Farm Gruta Grandes flying over “the Big Cave/ The Big Grotto” when it crashed, killing the pilot, twenty-six year old Paulo Henrique Blank Saad. The plane is suspected to have mechanical problems. The pilot was employed by Paracatu.
Witnesses saw the plane lose altitude and heard the engine experiencing problems. The farmer Carlos Gonçalves Pereira had hired the pilot to apply pesticides to his corn crop.
The Patos de Minas fire brigade responded to the scene, but the pilot was already dead.
The pesticide in the plane appears to have leaked into the water supply. Gelo Horizonte and SAAE water systems will be checking for environmental damage and the case is being reviewed by CENIPA- Centro de Investigação e Prevenção de Acidentes Aeronáuticos.
Six crew and three passengers died in the crash of a fifty year old An-12 on the outskirts of Irkutsk Russia at the Irkutsk plant airfield. All nine aboard died on impact. A fuel fire ensued but was under control by emergency responders.
So far six remains have been recovered but not the black boxes. The military crew was flying plane parts from Novosibirsk (Novosibirsk Aircraft Production Association (NAPO)) to Irkutsk-2 airport, when it hit a warehouse. There were no injuries reported in the warehouse.
Officials said:
“The An-12 came in for landing at low altitude and grazed military depot buildings 10 kilometers away from the landing strip, after which it crashed.”
Tatarstan Airlines operator of the Boeing 737-500 that crashed in November in Kazan only flies seven planes. (Maybe 6, now?) The one that crashed was leased from a Bulgarian company, with a history of minor accidents.
Fifty people died on the Tatarstan Airlines jet that dived nose-down to a fiery grave in Kazan. The investigation says that even though the two pilots were on their second go-around (i.e. second attempt to land), everything was working until impact. Recovering from the botched landing attempt, they pulled up at a too steep angle. From a height of 700 m the airplane entered a nose down attitude, reaching a -75° pitch. They died trying to dive to recover momentum, and impacted at 450 km/h.
Human error? Sleep deprivation? The crash embodies what is wrong with Russian Airlines.
Russia has withdrawn the operating license for Tatarstan Airlines due to
“noncompliance by the airline with certification requirements for Russia’s civil aviation, violations of the established norms of flying hours, working and relaxation time.” The action came after it was discovered that Tatarstan Airlines breached rules regarding personnel training and rest times for flight and cabin crew. Of course, Tatarstan Airlines is
Currently there’s a political wrestling match going on whether or not to ban planes over twenty years old.
In my opinion? They could buy all the new planes they want, but unless they supplement with proper training and rest protocols, safety issues will remain the same.
Chinese billionaire Lam Kok purchased a French vineyard, and boarded a helicopter with three others, including his son, the former owner who was flying the helicopter, and a translator, to take an aerial tour of the 65-hectare (160-acre) vineyards and surrounding grounds. Lam Kok’s and James Gregoire’s wives had declined to fly.
Twenty minutes after the flight took off, the helicopter went missing.
The helicopter, flown by James Gregoire, former owner of the vineyard, was missing but a witness came forward and told a mounted policeman that the helicopter had been seen falling into the Dordogne river, and people had been seen struggling in the water.
Emergency helicopters, divers and a hundred foot officers converged on the scene, and were deployed to search. After dark, a helicopter with a searchlight joined the searchers.
Lam Kok, new owner of the vineyard Château de la Riviere was head of the Hong Kong-based Brilliant group which plans to develop a tea and wine tasting center and hotel in Bordeaux.
One of the bodies was recovered around midnight. Rumors are that the body is of Lam Kok’s twelve year old son. The search was halted overnight, but resumed on the morning of the twenty-first. The search has been hampered by strong currents in the river.
Ironically, John Leprince, a former owner of the vineyard, died in a plane crash in 2002, not far from the crash site in the Dordogne. Combined with this crash, this means the last three owners of the vineyard were lost in aviation accidents.
Four people are missing after a helicopter crashed into the Dordogne river.
The helicopter fell into the waters of the Dordogne, by the commune of Lugon-and-l ‘ île-du-Carnay, bordering the River, where is located the castle of île-du-Carnay.
Divers were searching the waters of the Dordogne while police swarmed the banks at the port of Petit Chartron. At midnight Friday, an unidentified corpse was recovered in the wreckage of the helicopter. The search for the other three missing was suspended at 11:30 and will resume Saturday morning at 8:00 a.m..
Volunteer Coast Guard, Volunteer Marine Rescue and Water Police searched the coast Monday and Tuesday for a missing plane.
Pilot Alexander Rae, AKA Jimmy, was flying a Gold Coast Tiger Moth Joy Rides de Havilland DH 82 biplane off South Stadbroke Island off the coast of Queensland. His last message was “Conducting aerobatics over 3500 feet.” Jimmy was twenty-six years old, and had a reputation of being an excellent pilot. He was newly-wed to Alice, who is an equine dentist.
Tuesday at 9:30 a.m., sonar located the plane on the seabed near the Couran Cove Resort where the passenger and pilot were subsequently found by police divers, still inside the plane. Debris from the plane had already washed up.
The plane crashed into the water about four hundred meters from the coast on December 16. Police are looking for witnesses.
The Tiger Moth was built in the thirties. Tiger Moth Joyrides had been in operation since 1978.
The Asiana investigation continues.
Back in July, the pilot who was insecure about making a visual approach in a 777 crashed at San Francisco International Airport on a visual approach in Asiana Flight 214’s Boeing 777. Specifically, he told NTSB investigators “it was very difficult to perform a visual approach with a heavy airplane.” The glideslope was not working at the San Francisco airport, and that was an instrument the (*undertrained) pilot was relying on. The plane came in so low the tail struck the seawall and broke off. The video below shows the plane rotate 360 degrees and catch fire by the runway.
Video with news commentary
Before impact, the relief pilot in the jump seat repeated several times “sink rate” trying to warn the pilots at the controls that the jet was too quickly losing altitude. One of the pilots said “It’s low.” Then there was a stick shaker alert (which occurs when the plane is about to stall from flying too slowly. I once had a pilot do a presentation that included the disturbing grinding of the stick shaker alarm as it violently vibrated the control yoke. It’s an alarming direction to the pilots to increase thrust.)
When the stick shaker went off, the instructor called for a go around. It went off four seconds before impact. It was too late.
Both the instructor and the captain were relying on the auto throttle, and both were unaware it was off.
I’m not discounting the wounds of the injured, nor those three deaths, nor the tragedy of one of the teen victims being run over by an airport crash tender. (That’s a whole tragedy by itself—who knows if she might have survived but for being so obscured by foam that she was not visible to crash responders—through the firemen who carried her out surely must have known she was there.)
A dozen critically injured, a hundred-sixty-nine injured, but only three deaths.
It’s nothing short of a miracle. Especially on inspecting the condition of the burned out shell of the hull. Especially on reviewing the just-released surveillance video that shows the plane splintering after impacting the firewall, cartwheeling like a crippled gymnast down the runway and dissolving into a cloud of dust and flame. No jet fuel fire here——leaking oil ignited as it poured on to a hot engine.
The Kazan crash (Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363) from November 17th is fresh in my mind. Everyone aboard–fifty people (forty-four passengers and six crew) all died. The plane just fell from the sky while landing at an impossible 75-degree-nose-down attitude, piloted by a pilot whose license is apparently fake. Everyone in that crash died. (Tatarstan surveillance below.)
Of course one can see the physics—that everyone on the Tatarstan flight received the full direct impact, versus how the rolling of the Asiana plane dispersed some of the impact energy. Still, there is tremendous force in a crash.
I know I should be talking about pilot training, because this is yet another crash that appears to be due to pilots becoming too dependent on technology. But I will focus on that another day. Right now, I am overwhelmed after looking at the crash tape.
Asiana—Cartwheeling Catastrophe
I am surprised that I have neither heard or seen choruses of amazement that all but three people survived the rolling catastrophe in San Francisco. Some credit should perhaps go to the rescue crew, quick actions of the cabin crew, performance of the emergency slides, and maybe even the aerodynamics of the 777 whose seats are required to withstand 16g of dynamic force.
Sure, there was error involved in this crash, but when you look at the survival rate, some credit is due to the 5.5 billion Boeing put into research, development and safety of the 777.
The preliminary investigation of the Clutha helicopter crash revealed …
Other than ruling out what is not the cause, investigators may be no closer to determining the reason the helicopter fell out of the air. The report says there was “no evidence of major mechanical disruption of either engine” of the Eurocopter EC135 as it returned from a police operation in Dalkeith, Midlothian, on the night of the crash.
There were no flight recorders, but there is radar data and radio communications. The pilot had 5,500 hours, 646 in type.
The wreckage is at AAIB’s headquarters, and the investigation continues.
A fund has been opened for the victims. Donations can be made to the fund by calling 0141 287 7878 and paying by debit or credit card. Cash or cheques can be handed in to the council’s service desk at 45 John Street, Glasgow G1 1JE and bank payments can be made to Clutha Appeal Fund, sort code 83-44-00, account 10804129.
The “Bond Air Services Ltd. for Police Scotland” Eurocopter EC135 T2+ registration #G-SPAO with three aboard crashed in the Clutha Pub, Stockwell Street, Glasgow. Three of the victims were aboard, six on the ground.
Two witnesses Billy and Michael Byrne were inside the Clutha Vaults pub when the police helicopter crashed into it. The noise of the impact was indescribable, then…
There was a sort of silence.The whole ceiling at the left hand side of the bar, where it had been, had collapsed in on itself and the gantry of the bar also collapsed. There was an initial bout of screaming. There was a huge ball of dust. I went and opened the doors. Whilst I was holding the door I could see my brother…
Then, after finding each other, the two assisted where they could.
I think that person was conscious. He was moaning so he was conscious. There was a second person under him and that person, to me, didn’t look conscious — he was face-down. When we got out I spent time with a chap who was injured. He had a head injury. We put him in an ambulance and hopefully he is fine. We were fine. We were just lucky.
Others described the helicopter as tumbling at a strange angle, or that it dropped like a stone. Inside, the patrons of the bar heard a large bang before the lights went out. Others describe a whoosh, smoke, and eerie silence as the plane fell. The roof fell in, and dust floated in, choking everyone.
First responders were passers by. Some survivors walked away. The numbers of the casualties were initially 6 deceased, 32 hospitalized. The victims totaled nine, at last release. Two officers and a civilian pilot were aboard. Search and rescue dogs assisted in the search and rescue operation. Air accident investigation investigators, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, and rescue personnel were on the scene.
The helicopter involved passed a safety check last year. The helicopter does not have a flight data recorder but some of the systems may have recoverable data.
DNA tests will be performed on the 31 bodies so far recovered from the Namibia’s Bwabwata National Park, site of the crash of Mozambique Airlines Flight 470, a Embraer ERJ 190-100 IGW (ERJ-190AR) with 33 aboard. The plane is a total wreck, Written off (damaged beyond repair), burnt wreckage scattered in a low impact crash, possibly the result of bad weather.
The hundred-seat plane was only 1 / 3 full.
Recently revealed facts
Updated
A Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique Embraer ERJ 190-100 IGW (ERJ-190AR) disappeared in bad weather with poor visibility while en route from Luanda Airport Angola to Maputo International in Mozambique when it lost contact with ATC at 11:26 on Friday 29 November 2013.
The plane disappeared. A fruitless search Friday was cancelled due to rain and resumed Saturday. The wreckage was found in Nambia on Saturday. It had crashed in Bwabwata National Park-a protected game area and migration route 2,422 square miles. None of the twenty-seven passengers or six crew survived.
The wreckage was found burned out, the bodies scattered, near the Angola-Botswana border in a wilderness area. The black boxes were recovered by investigators.
07:00 pm (Maputo), November 30, 2013
It is with great pain and consternation that LAM confirms the tragic event of crash of the Embraer 190 aircraft with registration C9-EMC that made the flight TM470 Maputo-Luanda, last November 29, 2013.
At the end of the morning, the Namibian aviation authorities confirmed that the search and rescue team had located the place where the plane crashed in the North of Namibia, there are no survivors.
Right now, our prayers and our full attention go to the relatives of the passengers and crew who were aboard this plane, dedicating all our moral and psychological support in order to minimize the pain for the loss of their loved ones. This is our priority.
As the first form of assistance the LAM established a family support centre at the airports of Maputo and Luanda. Were assigned to these centers, specialized professionals for this type of events with the aim of providing the due advice to families. At the same time our legal department is working to give all judicial assistance with regard to the procedures to be followed after a plane crash where there have been fatalities.
We put at the disposal of the members of the affected families, a dedicated line for which you can call and get information. The number is: +258 21468778/9.
The flight TM470 took on board 27 passengers and 6 crew members.
The nationalities of the passengers were the following:
Mozambique (10);
Angola (9);
Portugal (5);
France (1);
China (1);
Brazil (1).
The crew comprised two pilots and three cabin crew and a technician.
LAM has already informed the embassies of countries whose citizens perished in this accident.
Engage an international company specializing in the management of disasters of this nature, Kenyon International, to support the efforts of the search and recovery of the remains of the victims and their belongings. For families this aspect is quite important because it will enable the identification of each person who was aboard this flight.
Part of Kenyon’s team is already on the way from the crash site being that the other party will join them tomorrow, arrived from England. We hope to have a clearer assessment about the scene of the accident throughout the day tomorrow, Sunday.
LAM sent this afternoon for Namibia an emergency response team to provide all the support to the authorities who are investigating this accident. According to international aviation rules, Namibia, a country where the accident occurred, should lead the investigation. Aeronautical authorities of Mozambique, Angola, Brazil and the air transport safety Bureau of the United States will also participate in the investigation.
Do we still have information about the circumstances in which the accident occurred, and we can’t even speculate on the likely causes of the same, since we should give time and space for researchers to conduct their work without interference.
Here’s the info on the plane involved in this accident:
The Embraer 190 Aircraft type);
B) Registration: C9-EMC;
C) capacity: 93 seats (9 Business and Economic 84);
D) manufacturing Country: Brazil;
E) powerplant: 2 General Electric CF34 engines-10 turbofan engines;
F) delivery date: November 17, 2012.
Until the date of the accident the plane had performed 2905 hours of flight time and flight 1877.
Finally we would like to express our thanks to the Governments of Namibia, Angola, Botswana and South Africa for their support and resources provided to rescue teams.
We owe our thanks to the volunteers and individuals who provided in support to families of the victims.
We will give more information as they become available.
We appeal to all the greater solidarity and support as possible in regard to pain and privacy of families affected.
Note:we ask journalists who wish to more information are kindly requested to contact the Office of institutional communication through numbers 827846815/825777946.
LAM will provide up-to-date information through the website: www.LAM.co.mz
09:00 pm (Maputo), November 29, 2013
LAM-Linhas Aéreas de Moçambique, s. a. reports that the flight departed from 470 TM Maputo international airport at 11:26 hours today, November 29, 2013, en route to Luanda, the Angolan capital, had its landing scheduled for the 14: 10:0, local time. Follow aboard 28 passengers and 6 crew members.
Information obtained gives indication of the aircraft have landed in Rundo, northern Namibia, bordering Botswana and Angola.
Currently LAM, Aeronautics and airport authorities are committed to establish contacts in order to confirm the information.
LAM will provide more information as the investigations are ongoing.
For additional information, contact the Office of institutional communication of LAM through Norberto Mucopa: 82 7846815 and Irina Matos: 825777946.
Maputo, November 29, 2013
Monday, a pilot and passenger were killed after the Mexican plane took off from Nuevo Leon and crashed in Veracruz.
On Tuesday, a Cessna took off from Mina International and crashed in Tampico, Tamaulipas, killing the pilot and passenger.
Also on Tuesday, a jet en route to Cozumel crashed in the Atlantic. All four of those aboard were recovered three miles northwest of Fort Lauderdale.
Initially, in two days there were three crashes, four fatalities and four missing. However two bodies have been found—pilot Josué Buendía Moreno and nurse Mariana González Isunza,—bringing the total dead to 6. Two Mexican men—pilot Hiram Galván de la O and Doctor Fernando Senties Nieto—are still missing off the coast of Fort Lauderdale. The search of the 4,000 square miles debris field has been called off. Over 1000 lbs of wreckage has been recovered.
On November 19, 2013, an Aircraft Guaranty Corp Trustee Socata TBM-700 was en route from Annecy – Haute-Savoie – Mont Blanc Airport with five men and one woman aboard when it developed problems. There were no survivors. They were all employed by part of the Vivialys, a real estate agency.
The plane was en route from Annecy to Toussus-le-Noble when it crashed ten miles south of Auxerre after 11:00 am (1000 GMT) in a field near the village of Mouffy. Some reports say “There was heavy fog” at the time of the crash and a witness heard “a strange whistling noise”. The debris field is spread in a radius of 1000 feet.
The aircraft was registered in the United States. The BEA, France’s Accident Investigation Bureau, sent four investigators.
The Boeing-737 flight that crashed in Kazan may have done so under the command of a
Pilot In Command (PIC) who had never performed a real go-around. The PIC had 1000 night flight hours and was properly trained, according to authorities—but if that is the case, how is it being reported that the PIC had never performed a go-around? What is verifiable is that there is a large debris field, a nose down crash. Note how windy it is while they are on the field putting out tape and spraying. Also there is a video being posted that shows a nosedive: http://lifenews.ru/#!news/122878 though whether this is actually the Tatarstan Airlines flight in question is, in fact, questionable.
The PIC had 25000 hours and the copilot had 1900 hours. Reports are that the “pilot of Kazan crash had put the plane into nosedive.” The plane hit nose first. We do not know if it was at the steep angle in the video above or in a more normal angle.
The black box has been recovered, and the preliminary report may be available soon.
Six crew members and 44 passengers died. Their bodies have not been identified yet, through the manifest has been released.
On November 19, 2013, a Jet Rescue Air Ambulance Lear Jet 35A was en route from Hollywood Int’l Airport in Fort Lauderdale to Cozumel International Airport when the plane crashed in coastal waters three miles from Fort Lauderdale. The last contact with ATC was at 8:20. The pilots reported mechanical problems after takeoff: a May Day. He was in trouble and asked for permission to return to the runway. He was going to make a 180-degree turn and return to the airport.
Skies were clear.
There were four people aboard at the time—the two aforementioned pilots and two passengers—a doctor and nurse named as Fernando Senties Nieto and Mariana González Isunza. The flight had just dropped off a patient in Broward County.
The bodies of a man and woman have been found. Command central was set up at a city marine on Southeast 15th.
The search is ongoing.
Fifty people and nine vessels involved in the search include a Miami Coast guard helicopter, two coast guard cutters, two small boats, three florida Fish and Wildlife conservation crew, and a Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue boat.
On November 17, 2013 at 6:23 pm, Flight 363, an Ak Bars Aero/Tatarstan Boeing 737-500 en route from Moscow to Kazan, after several go-arounds, and more than one landing pass. On the second (?) attempt, an hour later, it crashed on landing at Kazan. On touchdown, the jet’s nose hit the ground.
The plane caught fire on impact after a fuel tank caught fire. None of the 44 passengers or 6 crew survived the fire.
The leased 23 year old plane was registered as VQ-BBN.
The Metars were reported as:
UWKD 171530Z 23008G11MPS 5000 -RASN OVC007 03/03 Q0993 R29/2/0055 NOSIG RMK QFE734/0979
UWKD 171500Z 23009G12MPS 9999 -RASN OVC008 03/02 Q0994 R29/2/0055 NOSIG RMK QFE735/0980
“The visibility was five thousand meters, the runway was dry. You cannot even imagine better conditions.”
NOTAMS:
A4677/13 – AD CLSD DUE TO TECR. 17 NOV 18:20 2013 UNTIL 18 NOV 08:00 2013. CREATED: 17 NOV 18:29 2013
Transport Prosecution Office has opened a criminal investigation.
The passenger list includes Alexander V. Antonov (regional head of Russia’s Federal Security Service) and Irek Minikhanov, son of the president of Tatarstan.
A First Class Flyers LLC Cirrus SR22 with four aboard took off from Grand Bahama International Airport shortly after 11am Sunday morning November 10, 2013. Officers of the Royal Bahamas Marine and Police responded to the scene.
The plane had experienced engine trouble prior to the crash.
The plane crashed a few miles off the coast of Grand bahama Island. The names of the four Americans were not released immediately, but now the fatalities were reported as Fishers businessman Tony Wishart and Cindy Mierzwa from northern Indiana and Glen and Leslie Steiner from Arizona.
The pilot and thirteen passengers of a Cessna 208B Grand Caravan took off on Monday from Loreto to Ciudad Constitución Airport but lost contact with air traffic control after takeoff, and subsequently all died in a crash in the Sierra de La Giganta mountains. Their deaths were confirmed when the wreckage was located on October 16.
The Aereo Service Guerrero Cessna Grand Caravan had a license plate XA-TXM.
Passenger list
Eleazar Inzunza,
Esther Cota,
Evelia López López,
Israel Merino Parra,
Reyes Moreno Gastelum,
Joan Efrain Moreno Medrano,
Arturo Pérez Inzunza,
Alejandro Rosas,
Andrea Rosas,
Marco Rosas,
Ramona González Armenta,
Rosy Ornelas,
Carmen Rojas López,
Jesús Antonio Cárdenas Torre,
José Manuel Duarte
On Nov 16, 2013, a helicopter took off from Soeul Gimpo Airport en route to Jamsil-Dong to pick up LG employees. The LG Electronics Sikorsky S-76C++ helicopter flew into a high rise in Seoul.
Two pilots aboard the helicopter died after their propellor struck the 30 story high rise. No one in the building sustained injury.
Captain Park In-kyu and co-pilot Koh Jong-jin, were employed by LG. The weather conditions at the were foggy, with limited visibility.
On November 10, 2013, a Intermountain Powersports Inc Mitsubishi MU-2B-25 took off from Salina Kansas. The pilot was over the woods in Oklahoma when he contacted ATC about engine trouble just before he crashed in a field five miles north of Tulsa International Airport. The incident which occurred around 3:45 p.m. may have been the pilot’s first training flight on his recently purchased plane, though there appears to have been some training in Kansas. The plane lost an engine en route.
The pilot died in the crash on approach to the airport. He was Perry Inhofe, an orthopedic surgeon and the son of Senator James Inhofe.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators are investigating with FAA, Mitsubishi and Honeywell.
On Nov 8 2013, a privately owned Embraer EMB-711C Corisco en route to São Paulo took off from Cianorte, Paraná (Cianorte). The pilot circled the area several times, lost power, and crashed a thousand feet from the airport on a farm. On impact with the ground, the plane rolled.
The two people aboard were injured during the impact.
Pilot Walter Auada Botelho de Morais Toledo and passenger Emanuela Érica Garcia were taken to Hospital São Paulo, Cianorte. She is pregnant, and suffered Traumatic Brain Injury. The pilot broke his foot.
Walter Auada Botelho de Morais Toledo is a commercial pilot.
The fire department responded to the scene. The FAB will be investigating the accident.
A Metro Aviation / Life Air Rescue Eurocopter EC-135P-1 was on a test flight with the pilot and two mechanic aboard when it crashed in a field behind Metro Aviation. All three aboard were injured, and hospitalized at Willis-Knighton Hospital.
There was fuel on the ground, so emergency responders followed hazmat protocol. The accident was close to Shreveport Downtown Airport in a field at Hawn and North Thomas Avenue.
The leased EC135 experienced mechanical problems and was in for maintenance..
The affected helicopter has no history of problems, and has current certification. The cause of the incident has not yet been determined or released.
