Bodies being recovered from canyon

By Timothy Pratt

Monday, Sept. 22, 2003 | 11:16 a.m.

Authorities today were to begin removing bodies from the wreckage of a Las Vegas-based helicopter that crashed near the Grand Canyon on Saturday, the Mohave County sheriff's office said.

The accident, which happened shortly after noon Saturday, took the lives of a Sundance Helicopters pilot and six tourists.

The identities of the victims had not been released this morning. The pilot was a native of Japan who had become a U.S. resident. Two of the passengers were Japanese and at least two were German, officials said.

The accident occurred about 60 miles southeast of Las Vegas on a flight to the western edge of the canyon offered by the company as part of a tour package, Sundance President Jim Granquist said.

The crash Saturday happened on the Hualapai Indian Reservation, about 50 miles northeast of Kingman, Ariz., the Mohave County sheriff's office said.

It was the second most deadly canyon tour crash since 1995, when a plane went down while trying to return to Grand Canyon Airport, killing eight people. A total of 11 helicopter accidents involving trips to the canyon have taken place since 1998, two of which were fatal, according to National Transportation Safety Board records.

NTSB Investigator Wayne Pollack from the regional office in Southern California was on scene today, his office confirmed. He could not be reached for comment this morning because he was in the remote area of the park where the crash occurred, his office said.

Attempts to reach the lead investigator for the Mohave County sheriff's office, Detective John Slaughter, also were not successful. His office said he was on scene this morning to begin the body recoveries.

Officials said the passengers flew by plane from Las Vegas to Arizona to start the tour. A helicopter was to take them to a helipad along the Colorado River, where they would board a pontoon boat. Officials said the helicopter burst into flames upon impact.

Recalling the chill felt in the local industry after an August 2001 canyon crash involving Las Vegas-based Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters left six dead, Granquist said this weekend's accident "will affect all aspects of aviation to Grand Canyon for a period of time -- though it's hard to say how long."

Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority spokeswoman Erika Yowell said that immediately after such a crash tourists may initially have some trepidation about taking a helicopter tour.

But, she added, she did not expect the crash to have any significant impact on Vegas-based helicopter tours.

"These instances are rare and we do not foresee them deterring visitors from what, for many of them, is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to fly over the Grand Canyon," Yowell said.

Sundance's short trip up and down the canyon, known as a shuttle, was shut down Sunday, Granquist said. The helicopter crashed on a shuttle trip. The company was still offering other tours to the Grand Canyon on Sunday.

Federal investigators had cordoned off an area of two miles surrounding the scene where the helicopter had gone down in the western part of the canyon. Federal Aviation Authority and NTSB personnel were also in Las Vegas on Sunday night for a briefing with Granquist about the accident.

The investigation could take up to five days to complete, but Granquist said a joint press conference with federal authorities would take place today at a time and place to be announced.

Visibly shaken by the incident, the company president said Sunday night that the pilot was a man with a wife and three children who was "amiable (and) whose company everybody enjoyed."

The pilot was also driven, Granquist said, and "liked to be the best." He had worked three years for the company and had an airline transport license -- a higher category than the category of license required for his job.

The pilot had flown the same route so many times that he "probably had names for rocks out there," Granquist said.

The accident involved an AS350, a French-made helicopter which the company president described as a "'very popular tour helicopter throughout the world." It was the first fatal accident Sundance Helicopters had suffered, after seeing two accidents in its 18 years that were "more than just hard landings," Granquist said.

The most recent of the two accidents happened July 5, when a pilot had to make an emergency landing due to battery problems and the helicopter rolled over near Temple Bar, Ariz., according to a preliminary report by the NTSB. One passenger sustained minor injuries while five other passengers and the pilot were uninjured.

Granquist, who has run the company since its founding in 1985, said the business was "stressful ... due to the risk involved."

Still, he said the company, which employs 95 people, had seen 20 percent growth each of the last five years -- though he did recall a downturn that lasted a short period of time after the August 2001 crash involving Papillon.

Shutting down the shuttle flight service during the investigation meant a loss of up to 150 passengers a day, he said. The longer tours offered Sunday drew about 80 passengers, he said.

Over at Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters on Tropicana Avenue, an employee who didn't want her name used said that passengers and media with inquiries about Saturday's accident or related matters had to speak with the company's sales and marketing department. A security guard told a Sun reporter that he would have to leave the premises when the reporter tried to approach passengers.

Several other area helicopter tour companies refused comment on the accident.

Granquist hoped the investigation would clarify the cause of Saturday's accident, which occurred after what he said was a routine day that began about 6 a.m. with a 45-minute preflight check-up of the AS350, followed by a 7 a.m. takeoff.

"In aviation, you know there's going to be an accident sometime," he said. "But this is not a good experience."

Sun reporters

Ed Koch, Erin Neff and the Associated Press contributed to this report