National Transportation Safety Board Releases Preliminary Report On Drexel Hill Helicopter Crash
DREXEL HILL, Pa. (CBS) -- The National Transportation Safety Board released new details Monday on the Jan. 11 medical helicopter crash in Drexel Hill, Delaware County. All four people on board survived, including a 2-month-old baby girl.
The agency's preliminary report says a flight nurse and medic were out of their seats treating the patient when they heard a "loud bang."
"That's a mechanical failure. That tells me that something on that aircraft failed and it failed in the control system and it made the aircraft, the helicopter do something that the pilot didn't want it to do and that's always very dangerous," aviation expert John Gagliano said.
The helicopter then tilted sharply right, pinning the nurse and the medic to the ceiling, according to the report. Once the helicopter leveled out, the patient was secured and the crew braced for landing.
"The medic said that the helicopter rolled inverted, perhaps multiple times and that he and the nurse were 'pinned to the ceiling' and internal communication was lost," the report reads, in part.
The report did not say what that bang may have been.
Three weeks later, the crash is still being described as being a "miracle," ut that's just one part of the equation.
"It was inches to being catastrophic. If they hit power lines, if they hit the steeple of the church, if someone's walking their dog or with an infant in a stroller underneath them, the circumstances are completely different and totally tragic," Gagliano said.
The helicopter wreckage was taken to a facility in Delaware to be investigated further.
A final report from the NTSB could take more than a year to complete.
CBS3's Siafa Lewis contributed to this report.
