Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2003 | 11:16 a.m.
The National Transportation Safety Board's chief investigator of the crash of a Grand Canyon tour helicopter that killed a pilot and six tourists said that early evidence indicates the aircraft's main rotor hit a steep cliff.
NTSB investigator Wayne Pollack said at a news conference Monday in Las Vegas that a piece of the main rotor was discovered about 250 yards from the impact site. The engine and a tail rotor assembly were also found.
A search team earlier Monday recovered the bodies of the seven victims. The accident happened shortly after noon on Saturday, about 60 miles southeast of Las Vegas on a flight to the western edge of the Grand Canyon.
The victims were taken to the medical examiner in Kingman, Ariz., to verify their identities.
The Mohave County Sheriff's Department released the names of the seven victims who died when the Sundance Helicopters aircraft went down in an area known as Descend Canyon, roughly 50 miles northeast of Kingman.
The pilot, Takashi Mezaki, 45, was a native of Japan living in California. He had worked for Sundance for three years and had an airline transport license, a higher category than the license required for his job, Sundance President Jim Granquist said earlier.
The other crash victims were Dr. Joseph Hanna, 52, and his wife, Nouhad, of Huntington, W.V.; Masami Kato, 24, and Makiko Hatano, 23, both of Japan; Julia Hueyng, 33, and Wolf-Dieter Muller, 46, both of Germany.
Volunteer searchers and sheriff's deputies along with NTSB investigators had to rappel down steep canyon walls to recover the bodies and survey the wreckage, Pollack said.
"It's a high-risk operation," Pollack said, describing steep terrain and charred remains of the aircraft at the scene.
The investigation into the cause of the crash could take months, he said.
It was the worst 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, National Transportation Safety Board records show.
The French-made AS-350 helicopter made by Aerospatiale was shuttling the visitors from the rim of the Grand Canyon to a helipad along the Colorado River for a four- to six-minute ride, according to the Las Vegas-based Sundance Helicopters trip description.
The weather at the time of the crash was good with clear skies and calm air, Pollack said.
Once at the river's edge, the visitors were expected to board a pontoon boat at the bottom of the canyon as part of a tour offered in the Hualapai Indian Reservation in the canyon.
A witness reported seeing the helicopter shortly before it went into the gorge, Pollack said, but no witnesses saw the actual crash.
National Park Service pilot Bruce Lennon spotted the helicopter wreckage after park service dispatchers sent him to the area, National Park Service spokeswoman Roxanne Dey said.
Investigators said there was no flight recorder on board the craft.
The flight space where the helicopter crashed had no communication and there was no indication of a distress call.
"There is no evidence, thus far, of any radio transmission from the aircraft before the crash," Pollack said.
NTSB inspectors searched for the helicopter's logbooks, but a metal box discovered in the wreckage and believed to contain the logbooks was incinerated, Pollack said.
From preliminary reviews of the helicopter's records, the engine was not the original one and had been changed about a year ago, Pollack said.
Besides Pollack, two NTSB investigators -- a structural engineer and an operations engineer -- two Federal Aviation Administration investigators and two Honeywell investigators joined the crash review.
NTSB investigators were interviewing witnesses and reviewing aviation records on the helicopter Monday.
The investigation will continue until the NTSB is satisfied that the cause of the crash can be explained, Pollack said. The investigating team will turn its findings over to the National Transportation Safety Board in Washington.
"It will be many months before the investigation is completed," Pollack said.
The accident was the first fatal crash for Sundance Helicopters, which has been in business and based in Las Vegas since 1985. Granquist said there had been two other accidents in the company's 18-year history.
The most recent of the two accidents occurred 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 NTSB report. One passenger sustained minor injuries while five other passengers and the pilot were uninjured.
The company employs 95 people. Saturday's flight was a shuttle that normally carries up to 150 people per day.
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