MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
How did two small helicopters crash into each other midair in New Jersey yesterday? Federal investigators are beginning to piece together an answer. The collision left one pilot dead and another with life-threatening injuries, according to local police. NPR's Frank Langfitt reports.
FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: The helicopters collided just before 11:30 a.m. near the Hammonton Municipal Airport, which is about midway between Philadelphia and Atlantic City. It was cloudy, but visibility appeared to be good. John Cox is an aircraft accident investigator and retired commercial airline pilot. He says collisions like this don't happen much.
JOHN COX: It's very rare. It's very rare. Helicopters fly under visual rules. Like an automobile, you see another helicopter, and you avoid that.
LANGFITT: The Hammonton Airport is small and has no control tower. Aviation experts say that pilots must use their radios to communicate their movements to each other. Cox says investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, will try to figure out why the pilots failed to avoid each other before it was too late.
COX: They will look at things like pilot distraction. They will look at the angles to make sure that there's some part of the helicopter that might block the view of one of the pilots. They're going to look at the experience level of both pilots.
LANGFITT: A witness posted video from a nearby parking lot showing one of the helicopters spinning as it fell into a field. Jeff Guzzetti is a former aircraft accident investigator for the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration.
JEFF GUZZETTI: It appears that helicopter was hit on its tail because if you take out the tail rotor, the main rotor will cause the body of the helicopter to just turn round and round and round like a corkscrew.
LANGFITT: The helicopters crashed about 200 feet from each other. According to the website flightaware.com, both helicopters flew out of the same airport earlier in the morning and landed at Hammonton at the same time. The owner of a cafe at the Hammonton Airport told the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia that the pilots had breakfast together that morning. Witnesses told local police the pilots then flew off in tandem.
Frank Langfitt, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
