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Two helicopters crashed in New Jersey in what federal authorities say was a midair collision that killed one person and critically injured another.
Hammonton Police Chief Kevin Friel said rescuers responded to a report of an aviation crash at about 11:25 a.m. on Sunday, and police and fire crews subsequently extinguished flames that engulfed one of the helicopters.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) described the crash as a midair collision between an Enstrom F-28A helicopter and Enstrom 280C helicopter over Hammonton Municipal Airport. Only the pilots were on board each aircraft.
One person was killed and another was transported to a nearby hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Sal Silipino, owner of a cafe near the crash site, said the pilots were regulars at the restaurant and would often have breakfast together. He said he and other customers watched the helicopters take off before one began spiraling downward, followed by the other.
“It was shocking,” he said. “I’m still shaking after that happened.”
Hammonton is a town of about 15,000 people located in Atlantic County in the southern part of New Jersey, about 56 kilometres southeast of Philadelphia. The town has a history of agriculture and is located near the Pine Barrens, a forested wilderness area that covers more than 405,000 hectares.
The FAA and U.S. National Transportation Safety Board have been notified and will be investigating the crash, Friel said.
Investigators will likely first look to review any communications between the two pilots and whether they were able to see each other, said Alan Diehl, a former crash investigator for the FAA and NTSB.
“Virtually all midair collisions are a failure to what they call ‘see and avoid,”‘ Diehl said. “Clearly they’ll be looking at the out-of-cockpit views of the two aircraft and seeing if one pilot was approaching from the blind side.”
Although it was mostly cloudy at the time of the crash, winds were light and visibility was good, according to the weather forecasting company AccuWeather.
