CARLSBAD, Calif. (KGTV) – As the NTSB and FAA investigate the deadly Los Angeles news helicopter crash, ABC 10News wanted to get insight into what’s been released about what happened at this time.
“When you see something like that, it’s a terrible tragedy....the first thing that I think about as a flight instructor is I try to figure out, you know, potentially what happened," said Candise Tu, Chief Flight Instructor at Civic Helicopters.
ABC 10News spoke to Tu, who’s logged over 10,000 hours in the air and is chief flight instructor at Civic Helicopters in Carlsbad, about the crash.
“We looked at a couple of things. There was some footage; it looks like from probably the reporter's camera,” Tu said. “The camera is zoomed in on the bus accident, right, for a long time, and then basically it starts really vibrating at the end. That's typically indicative of like very low RPM, and you know they're losing control.”
According to the Associated Press, there are no details on what caused the crash. However, in video before the aircraft went down, an alarm could be heard inside the cockpit of the chopper as it lost altitude.
“What we wanted to figure out was, you know, what were the alarms going off, and it appears that there was the sort of like the faster chirp or warble that you hear at the beginning of that video. That's a high RPM warning, and then later on, you get a low RPM warning horn,” Tu said.
Tu also looked at the aftermath for information as to what possibly could have happened.
“Looking at sort of the aftermath, the main thing that stood out to me was that the blades were pretty much intact,” Tu said. “So, when the blades are pretty much intact at the end of the at the end of the accident, that suggests that the helicopter was at a very low RPM, and essentially when the helicopter is at a very low RPM, it doesn't generate enough lift, and it's essentially going to fall out of the sky.”
The full preliminary report about this crash from the NTSB would be released in about 30 days.
