Preliminary report says little new about Helo-1 crash

TALKEETNA — With the investigation still in its infancy, the National Transportaiton Safety Board on Wednesday issued a preliminary report on the crash of Helo-1.

Helo-1, the main search and rescue helicopter for Alaska State Troopers in Southcentral Alaska, went down on a mission to a lake near Talkeetna on March 30.

The crash killed three people — the troopers’ decorated pilot Mel Nading, Trooper Tage Toll and the snowmachiner they’d gone to rescue, Carl Ober, 56, of Talkeetna.

Clint Johnson with the NTSB said that the investigation has so far been able to fly to the scene of the crash and remove the wreckage, storing it in a “safe and secure hangar in the Palmer-Wasilla area.”

“They can only do so much in the field there,” Johnson said. “Getting the wreckage recovered and back to a dry hangar on a cement floor is paramount.”

He said that usually preliminary reports like the one issued Wednesday come out within eight days of the crash. This one took a little longer because the NTSB had to call up a lead investigator from Chicago.

“All four of us here in the Anchorage office, we work very closely with the Alaska State Troopers,” he said, and all of them knew Nading, hence the need to call in Aaron Sauer from the Chicago office.

Johnson said the next report to come out will be a so-called “factual” report, usually released nine or 10 months after a crash and a few weeks later a final report will come out, which is pretty much the same as the factual report, only with the addition of a final determination on a cause of the crash.

As for what the initial report states, there were few if any clues as to why the helicopter went down.

Reports at the time showed that pilots in the weather at the time reported “instrument meteorological conditions,” which is pilot-speak for weather in which you fly using your instruments rather than what you can see out of your windscreen.

“The folks in the area were reporting snow showers, reduced visibility, freezing rain; however in Talkeetna, it was a little bit better,” Johnson said. But, with the nearest weather station at the Talkeetna airport 5.6 miles from the crash site, “All we can go with is witness reports.”

The NTSB reports that, despite a fire that consumed quite a bit of the wreckage, investigators managed to recover an “Appereo Vision 10000 cockpit imaging and flight data monitoring device” and a GPS system. Both were sent to the NTSB’s laboratory in Washington, D.C.

The report says the flight had landed at the rescue site at 10 p.m. and took off again at 11:13 p.m. Troopers tried to reach Helo-1 at 12:44 a.m. with no success.

According to media reports, the helicopter went down less than three miles from where it took off.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.