Last Friday, a tourist helicopter with 5 passengers and the pilot crashed into the ocean in bad weather, about a half-mile offshore of Haena, on the north shore. Three of the passengers died, while two others were rescued and the pilot swam ashore.
According to the newspaper, the wreckage was recovered from the ocean yesterday, and today some of the rescuers and the investigators released some more details of the accident. The front page photos don’t seem to be archived with the stories above, so I scanned them for the record:
Image source: The Garden Island print edition, September 26, 2005
Image source: The Garden Island print edition, September 27, 2005
I’m wondering: has anybody heard of this outside of Hawaii? Please let me know in a comment if you have.
The Sunday, September 25, 2005, edition of the Austin American- Statesman had a one paragraph article on page2 under the column Nation Digest.
“Hawaii
Copter crash kills three
Haena – A tour helicopter crashed into the ocean near Kauai’s rugged NaPali Coast, killing three people and leaving three others in the waves to swim to shore. The pilot, who survived, said the helicopter had encountered wind shear just before going down.”
Well, there goes my conspiracy theory that the aviation and tourism industries suppress this kind of news. I still think that if the traveling public knew that one helicopter crashed every year, it would be bad for the helicopter business, especially those whose names appear on the tails of crashed helicopters.