Two helicopters collided midair over Hammonton Municipal Airport in Hammonton, New Jersey, on Sunday, leaving one pilot dead and the other critically injured, authorities said. Hammonton Police Chief Kevin Friel said crews responded to a reported aviation crash at about 11:25 a.m., and fire and police personnel later extinguished flames engulfing one of the helicopters.
The Federal Aviation Administration described the crash as a midair collision between an Enstrom F-28A helicopter and an Enstrom 280C helicopter over the airport. The FAA said only the pilots were on board each aircraft, and that one pilot was killed while the other was transported to a hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Video from the scene showed one helicopter spinning rapidly as it descended, authorities said. After police and fire crews arrived, they extinguished flames that engulfed one of the helicopters, according to Friel.
Friel said the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash. Investigators, he said, would likely begin by reviewing communications between the pilots and whether they were able to see each other.
Alan Diehl, a former crash investigator for the FAA and NTSB, said investigators will likely examine whether the collision involved a failure of what aviation authorities describe as “see and avoid.” Diehl added that midair collisions commonly involve one pilot approaching from a blind side, and that investigators will likely look at the out-of-cockpit views from the aircraft.
Hammonton is about 35 miles (56 kilometers) southeast of Philadelphia and has a population of about 15,000, according to Friel’s description of the community. The town sits near the Pine Barrens, a forested wilderness area covering more than 1 million acres (405,000 hectares), and crews responded in a mostly cloudy but low-wind period with good visibility, according to AccuWeather.
Witnesses described seeing the helicopters take off and then one begin to spiral downward, followed by the other. Sal Silipino, who owns a cafe near the crash site, said the pilots were regulars at his restaurant and that customers watched the aircraft depart before one helicopter started spiraling downward, followed by the other.
Another witness, Hammonton resident Dan Dameshek, told NBC10 that he was leaving a gym when he heard a loud snap and saw two helicopters spinning out of control. Dameshek said the first helicopter flipped from right-side up to upside down and started rapidly spinning, and that after a moment the second helicopter also began rapidly spinning out of the air.
Investigators will continue gathering details about the crash as the FAA and NTSB begin their review, including potential evidence from pilot communications and visibility conditions around the time of the collision.