Four dead in Kauai tour helicopter crash
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Sources: Hawaii Advertiser, Honolulu Star Bulletin, Aero-News Net
LIHU'E, Kaua'i — Four people were killed and three seriously injured last Thursday when a Heli USA tour helicopter made a mid-afternoon, clear weather crash landing on grass along the runway beside Princeville Airport.
National Transportation Safety Board officials were expected to complete their Princeville Airport helicopter crash site investigation today and have tentatively arranged to have the A-Star helicopter moved to a hangar at Lihu'e Airport.
Nigel Turner, chief executive officer of Heli USA, arrived on Kauai Saturday, both to help in any way with the investigation, he said, and to offer his condolences to the families of those aboard the chopper.
"At present our major concern is for the ... families," Turner said. While flights to Kauai have been a "nightmare," he said all the relatives of the crash victims have arrived in the state.
Turner said he is also planning a memorial service for his friend and fellow pilot, Joe Sulak, with Sulak's family, who is on Kauai. Sulak, whom Turner called a friend, worked on Kauai as the lead pilot for Heli USA for the past four years and, prior to that, worked as a tour operator for Heli USA on the mainland.
"We were all very close to Joe," he said. His "family wants to spend time here to grieve and also with our staff."
Cornelius Scholtz, 31, of Santa Maria, Calif., one of three passengers who survived Thursday's helicopter crash at Princeville Airport, remained in critical condition at the Queen's Medical Center yesterday, according to a nursing supervisor. His wife, Magriet Inglebrecht, was one of four people who died in the crash.
Besides Inglebrecht and Sulak, 59, of Princeville, Kauai, John O'Donnell, 45, of East Rockaway, N.Y., and Teri McCarty, 47, of Cabot, Ark., also died in the crash.
The conditions of O'Donnell's wife, Veronica, 45, and McCarty's husband, James, 48, were not available, said a nursing supervisor. Both survived the crash and were transported to Queen's.
FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said that the pilot, who flew helicopters during the Vietnam War, had more than 10,000 hours flying an A-Star, the model that crashed. The craft itself had showed no significant problems in past FAA inspections, he said.
Nigel Turner, chief executive of Las Vegas-based Heli-USA, said the aircraft, one of six in his Hawaii fleet, was minutes from its scheduled landing when it crashed. Turner defended the safety of his helicopters, which also fly tours in Nevada.
“The company has flown over a million passengers. This is our second accident in a million people,” he said. He said he wouldn't hesitate to put his own family in his helicopters.
A makeshift memorial, including flowers, a Bible and a small teddy bear holding a red plumeria, lay against a wire fence at the tiny airport.
The crash comes one month after the FAA announced new safety standards for air tour companies that operate at many scenic vacation spots around the country and for pilots who offer rides at air shows.
The FAA promised to closely monitor deaths and other accidents involving air tours after looking into 107 accidents that killed 98 people between 1988 and 1995. The safety rule takes effect in August.
The safety board on Feb. 13 also called for tougher standards for monitoring of tour operators across the country based on two earlier crashes on Kauai, including one involving a Heli-USA helicopter.
Brian Rayner, lead investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, said that despite the possible pause, investigators were able to take apart some of the main components and will test them off island in the next few days.
While the main body of the A-Star 350BA aircraft was transported yesterday to a Lihue Airport hangar, Rayner said the engine and hydraulics system will be sent to the manufacturers so that they can be test-run to determine whether they were functioning properly at the time of the crash.
The hydraulic pump was removed as "one unit, going intact" to the manufacturer to be tested, Rayner said. Other hydraulics components will also be shipped to their manufacturers.
Federal officials will be on hand when the equipment is tested, Rayner said.
State Department of Transportation spokesman Scott Ishikawa said his agency has been asked to expect the helicopter to be moved today, by flatbed truck, to a secure indoor location for detailed analysis of the wreckage.
"Federal officials have asked us to arrange for hangar space at Lihu'e Airport," Ishikawa said.
In previous helicopter crashes, wreckage was deposited in a fixed-wing aircraft hangar where investigators would lay out the pieces of the wreckage in rough approximation of how they fit together on the helicopter and try to determine how the accident happened.
Pilot Joe Sulak, who was among those killed in the crash, reported by radio before the crash that he was experiencing a hydraulic failure, so the hydraulic system is expected to get careful attention. Other pilots said the A-Star alarm for a hydraulic failure is the same as for other problems, including low rotor speed, thus the condition of the engine at the time of the crash is also likely to receive critical attention.
One issue that puzzles pilots is why the wrecked helicopter's massive, yellow floats are inflated.
"Very important is whether the floats were deployed before landing or after. This may be a very important key to the puzzle," said Richard Schuman, president of O'ahu's Makani Kai Helicopters.
Schuman and others have said that landing an A-Star helicopter with a loss of hydraulic power is difficult, but is a maneuver pilots practice. Heli USA President Nigel Turner said Friday that Sulak practiced the maneuver successfully on a check ride just a week before the crash.
"The landing without hydraulics is done every day in practice. The pilot did everything he should-could have done up to the last few seconds," said Schuman, who also is a pilot.
But the addition of inflated floats during a landing would make it an exceedingly difficult process, said Mike Danko, a helicopter pilot and aviation attorney in San Mateo, Calif.
"Inflatable floats restrict your ground options. I've never heard of anyone try to land on land with inflatable floats," Danko said.
The standard method for landing a helicopter without hydraulics is what is called a run-on landing, in which the pilot brings the helicopter to the ground while still moving forward, and it can slide to a stop on its metal skids.
"One of the big advantages of the skis is the ability to do a run-on landing," Danko said. The type of inflatable floats used on the crashed helicopter would prevent a successful run-on landing, he said.
Turner said that Heli USA spent $600,000 installing floats on all its Kaua'i A-Star helicopters last year. They are designed to keep a helicopter afloat in case of a water landing.
On Sept. 23, 2005, three Heli USA passengers died when an A-Star helicopter without floats crashed into the water and quickly sank.
In a Feb. 13 press release, Heli USA addressed the issue: "Since this event, Heli USA has installed additional safety equipment including external inflatable floats on its helicopters even though they are still not required (by the FAA). ... The company has done so, so that its helicopters can fly beyond autorotative distance from shore and conduct interisland commercial operations."
Danko said such floats rarely if ever inflate as the result of impact. "I think that's really unlikely. I have never seen that happen. It's certainly possible, but really unlikely," he said.
Others have suggested that Sulak may have initially experienced difficulty over water and deployed his inflatable pontoons. Another theory is that the floats were deployed as a last-minute effort to soften an expected hard landing.
"I would keep an eye on the NTSB/FAA or on the ground witnesses to see if the floats were deployed before landing. ... The industry is waiting to see the expert's opinions," Schuman said.
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