Longford helicopter crash report cites ‘inappropriate’ landing site

An investigation into a helicopter crash in Co Longford in 2015 which caused substantial damage to a nearby restaurant and guest house has found a loss of clearance at an inappropriate landing site contributed to the crash.

One person suffered minor injuries in the dramatic crash, which was captured on CCTV and mobile phone, at a canal bank in Abbeyshrule on July 15th, 2015. The pilot and a passenger were unharmed in the incident which resulted in the destruction of the helicopter and caused substantial damage to a nearby property.

An Air Accident Investigation Unit (AAIU) report on the crash noted that on landing the "main rotor blades of the helicopter made contact with a timber-clad wall of the building. This caused the tail of the helicopter to swing rapidly towards the wall and collide with it. The tail boom separated from the helicopter, broke apart and came to rest in the canal. The helicopter rolled to the right and impacted with the canal bank," the report stated.

“Debris was scattered over a large area of the canal and its bank. There was no fire. The pilot and passenger evacuated the helicopter and were uninjured. One person, who was in the building at the time of the event, received minor injuries.”

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The report said three people were in a ground-floor function room at the time of the crash. “The wall that was struck bounded the function room and a first-floor bedroom. One of the persons present in the function room received a small cut below his left eye.” The injury may have resulted from flying debris, according to the report.

The 63-year-old pilot told investigators the landing site was “very tight, but it was certainly do-able”. He said “there was never any question about the machine being defective in any way. It was just simply a momentary lapse of my concentration.”

In its conclusions, the AAIU report cited a “loss of clearance between the main rotor blades and an adjacent building during an attempted landing at a confined site” as a probable cause. The report stated that a contributory factor was the “selection of an inappropriate and unsuitable site for landing a helicopter.”