The pilot and two crew members were flying between Auckland and Taumaranui when the Iroquois helicopter crashed in hilly terrain seven kilometres northeast of Taumaranui around 1730 on Monday. Onlookers say the helicopter circled above farmland and appeared to be looking for somewhere to land before a rotor fell off, and the craft crashed to the ground and exploded. Initial rescue operations were hampered as the helicopter was still ablaze when emergency workers arrived at the scene.
Witnesses say the rotor blades fell off before the chopper crashed.
The crash is the third fatal helicopter accident this year. In January, pilot Andy Shaw died in a helicopter accident in Wellington, and in February Peter MacColl died when his helicopter crashed near Motueka. They are used in an extremely diverse range of tasks in a diverse range of conditions and unfortunately sometimes accidents do happen. Now air accident investigators have the task of trying to determine exactly what happened to this helicopter. The manager of the company whose helicopter has visited the site.