NEWPORT BEACH – Three people were killed and two injured Tuesday afternoon when a helicopter that had taken off from nearby John Wayne Airport crashed up against a house in a neighborhood on the northeast end of Upper Newport Bay.
Four people were aboard the helicopter, with an adult bystander on the ground outside the house the fifth affected by the crash, said authorities, who declined to release other details of the casualties.
Newport Beach fire officials said they got the first call at 1:51 p.m. about a helicopter clipping a corner house at Egret Court and Shearwater Place.
Neighbors ran outside their gated Bayview Terrace homes to see what had happened.
“I went down with three helicopters,” said David Henry, a Vietnam vet. “I recognized the noise and we came out and I saw the pilot … about 10 to 15 feet away from the helicopter. …
“There were about three others, all jammed inside there like sardines,” Henry said. “We tried to peel back the aluminum and help them.”
Paramedics arrived and were able to get to the others; Henry thought there were two men and two women aboard.
“They had to use the Jaws of Life to get them out,” he said.
The four-seat, Robinson R44 helicopter pushed in a master bedroom wall; the aircraft’s tail section ended up in a side yard.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have launched investigations on what led to the incident. The helicopter had taken off at some point from John Wayne, about a mile and a half away, but it is unclear if the pilot had just left the airport, was landing or in mid-flight when the crash occurred.
The downed aircraft is owned by Spitzer Helicopter Leasing in Canyon Lake. Eric Spitzer, the company’s president, said he leases it and six others to Revolution Aviation, a flight school at John Wayne Airport. Revolution offers pilot training, sightseeing tours and special events, and has a 100 percent safety record, according to its website.
Mark Robinson, Revolution’s CEO, was not aboard the helicopter. Robinson, in a text to a reporter Tuesday night, said he couldn’t talk more now but did say, “Please say prayers.”
Video from Sky5 shows the wreckage of helicopter that crashed into Newport Beach home. https://t.co/gfdGrFdPsA pic.twitter.com/lFev41jGMI
— KTLA (@KTLA) January 30, 2018
Mark Robinson is not related to the owners of Torrance-based Robinson Helicopter Co., founded by Frank Robinson and now headed by his son, Kurt Robinson, said company spokeswoman Loretta Conley.
“We’re pretty shaken up over the crash this afternoon – it’s pretty devastating,” Conley said. “We have people (who can) assist the authorities in their investigation. … We’re devastated by (the accident), and we’ll do our best to help people out.”
Robinson is designed to be an inexpensive helicopter that’s relatively easy to fly and is widely used around the world for ranching, aerial photography and sight-seeing. Robinson is the world’s largest manufacturer of such choppers.
But some pilots and regulators say the craft is prone to “mast-bumping,” a problem that can be caused by an inexperienced pilot and can lead to fatal crashes. A mast bump is contact between an inner part of a main rotor blade and the main rotor drive shaft, or “mast.”
It is not known if mast bumping had anything to do with Tuesday’s crash.
The company sees additional pilot training as the key to preventing mast bumping. But the issue has come under scrutiny from regulators in New Zealand and Australia and drawn a string of lawsuits alleging manufacturing defects are to blame.
In the past five years, according to the NTSB’s database, three other aircraft have had accidents near John Wayne Airport.
The database was not yet updated to include an incident on Sunday in which a pilot flew beneath an overpass and made a safe emergency landing on the 55 freeway in Costa Mesa after his aircraft, a Beech 633, lost power. No one was injured in that incident.
One accident, involving the same make and model of helicopter involved in Tuesday’s crash, had a problem on takeoff last July and came down hard at the airport. Another accident involved a Cessna plane that lost an engine and crash-landed onto I-405 in June. The helicopter pilot who crashed at the airport was not injured, and the Cessna’s occupants were injured.
Another incident happened Dec. 26 and involved a Cessna, but little information has been released by the NTSB.
Paddi Faubion, who lives across the street from the house that was hit Tuesday, heard what sounded like a train before the crash.
“You think to yourself that maybe something could happen, living so close (to the airport),” she said. “But this time I just remember thinking that something was going to fall onto my house.”
When she went outside to see what was happening, “There was just this cloud of dust everywhere. One guy was outside (of the helicopter), and he was bleeding from the mouth.”
She and other neighbors hurried over to offer help, but the helicopter was scrunched up, trapping the others inside. Firefighters arrived and cut the fuselage to get the other three out.
The helicopter had hit the outside of the master bedroom of her neighbor’s house; her neighbor was in the kitchen at the time, Faubion said.
“She was shaking so much,” Faubion said of her neighbor. “Her husband was right across the street (at a house) when it happened, too.”
Immediately, she was fearful that those inside the helicopter could not have survived.
“I just put my hand over (the) helicopter, and I prayed for them. … It’s just tragic.”
Staff writers Laylan Connelly and Tony Saavedra contributed to this report.
