DREXEL HILL, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — It's already in the history books as the "Miracle on Burmont Road," but there is still a lot to learn about a medical helicopter crash on Tuesday afternoon in Drexel Hill.
The crumpled components of that helicopter were lifted from the lawn of the Drexel Hill United Methodist Church where it landed, and loaded onto a flatbed truck Wednesday afternoon. Investigators documented the cockpit and looked at things like the switchology and major components at the crash site.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating. Officials say the pilot, copilot, a nurse, and a very young passenger made it out without serious injury.
Many are calling that pilot a hero, as well as the neighbors who rushed in to help. That he managed to crash land the medical helicopter without hitting a web of power lines, the church it landed next to, a nearby school or a single house is remarkable.
NTSB Senior Air Investigator Brian Rayner said that he talked with the pilot, who was medicated, so conversations with the pilot for the investigation will happen later.
Investigators will further examine the helicopter at a secure site in Delaware, with parts being sent to various locations in the U.S. and Europe for testing, he said.
"It will help us determine what was going on with the engines, transmissions, whatever is required,“ Rayner said.
"While significantly damaged, evidence-wise is it is in very good shape. I have excellent people working with me on this so I have a great deal of confidence, no guarantees of course, but I have a great deal of confidence that once we are done, we will be able to explain this accident, “
Rayner described a three-step process of the investigation, involving people, the machine and the environment the helicopter flew within at the time. Weather, terrain and traffic communications will be studied, and they will obtain any recordings of air traffic control. No black box was available.
The investigation could take a year, Rayner said.
Rayner explained that even though the helicopter was significantly damaged, it's in "very good shape" for gathering evidence.
A former Navy pilot and aviation law expert who spoke to KYW Newsradio says the pilot was trained to deal with situations like this, but "until you face a situation like this, you don't really know how you're going to react."
The big question before investigators at the moment: What exactly went wrong? There's a report that the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency said the aircraft had encountered some kind of mechanical problem.
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At some point, Rayner said, investigators will want to talk to the adults who were on board.
"We have a live pilot, thank God. We also have a comprehensive set of his training records. So we’ll be looking at his total experience," he said.
"I'm very grateful that the occupants were relatively unhurt. The pilot is the most significantly injured. The other three are miraculously unhurt."
Everyone on board, including a 2-month-old girl, has been checked out at an area hospital and is expected to be OK.
Michael Smith, a neighbor, says "miraculous" is a very good word to describe what happened. He talked with KYW Newsradio about what saw when he ran outside on Tuesday.
"No fire. The fuel was flying out of the helicopter, like it burst open the fuel cell, so it was pouring out, streaming out, but thank God, no fire," Smith said. "Whoever was piloting that chopper did an excellent job, because he missed all the houses."
Vicki Porter who works with at an insurance office on the block was equally astonished, saying, "How that thing did not explode is beyond me."
At about 1 p.m. Tuesday, there was a flurry of 911 calls about this chopper going down rapidly and then finally crash landing right outside the church. This chopper started in Maryland and stopped in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. The destination was supposed to be Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
"It’s ironic that this helicopter landed in front of a church. If that’s not divine intervention, I don’t really know what is," Upper Darby Fire Chief Derrick Sawyer said Wednesday morning.
Delaware County Emergency Services Director Tim Boyce says the crew deserves all the credit for doing all they could to protect the baby.
"When you think about a traumatic crash like this, everything we’ve heard is the crew focused on the child. When you think about climbing out of an aircraft like this and their primary concern was just getting this baby out of this aircraft, it’s amazing."
John Gagliano, a former Navy pilot and an attorney specializing in aviation law, joined KYW Newsradio live Wednesday morning to share his impressions of the near catastrophe.
“The pilot is certainly a hero,” he said.
Gagliano said the level of difficulty in bringing down a helicopter down safely, when nothing on board is going right, depends on a lot of factors. “What was going wrong, when it was going wrong, how far from the ground. And we don't know any of those answers,” Gagliano said.
“Right now the NTSB is on scene. Likely the aircraft manufacturer is also on scene with the operator to determine what went wrong. But when things go wrong in the air, you don't have very long to act. So time is critically important.”
He said the pilot was highly trained to deal with emergencies like these.
“He had qualifications from the FAA, and he worked for a medical evacuation operator, which is highly regulated by the FAA. Their training is highly regulated. So the pilots, you know, are trained to deal with these situations. But the reality is until you face a situation like this, you don't really know how you're going to react – and this pilot reacted, it seems like, perfectly.”
Gagliano says it’s hard to say this early what could have happened to cause the crash, but he suggests part of the pilot’s success may have been the two-engine design of the aircraft.
“You sometimes see crashes like this, that happen in neighborhoods, where the pilot does not have an opportunity to land, when there is a single engine on the helicopter and that single engine fails,” he said. “We know that this helicopter had two engines.”
He says, with clear skies on Tuesday, it’s not likely that weather played a part. He says it’s most likely that something onboard the helicopter went wrong, but he added he didn’t have any further information to go on.
The NTSB has said in the past that more needs to be done to improve the safety of these medical helicopters. A medical helicopter crash in 2018 in Wisconsin left three people dead.
KYW Newsradio Staff contributed to this report.
