Helicopter drama
Helicopter crash
10 March 2009: While thousands of people were celebrating at the Deutschlandsberger Kirtag, a police helicopter crashed just a few meters away. Two passengers died, one survived seriously injured. First responders Kurt Moser and Helmut Neubauer look back on the day of the accident.
March marked the 15th anniversary of the terrible helicopter crash in Deutschlandsberg. A police helicopter set off to search for a missing person. However, the aircraft lost altitude directly above the district capital and crashed right next to a housing estate. Just a few meters away, on the main square, thousands of people streamed through the Kirtag. Meanwhile, Kurt Moser was sitting on the couch in his apartment. "I thought, what's that noise, something must have happened." He went to the window and saw the helicopter crash into the meadow next to his house. Full of horror, but without hesitation, he rushed down the stairwell towards the scene of the accident and began to pull the victims out of the wreckage.
Helmut Neubauer tells a similar story: "I was at the church festival with my daughter and went to the car with her. I heard a helicopter and thought to myself that the noise didn't sound good at all." Then he saw the shadow of the device and knew it was about to crash. The firefighter shouted to his daughter and her school friend to call the emergency services quickly. Meanwhile, he ran as fast as his legs would carry him to the scene of the accident and tried to rescue the three occupants. He was shocked to discover that he knew one of them - it was a popular member of the local police force.
The first responders were aware that there was a high risk of explosion due to the leaked kerosene. But: "In a situation like that, you just act," they both agree. What still upsets them today are the thoughts of the onlookers who gathered around the scene of the incident. Some were on the verge of lighting up a cigarette. "It was absolute madness, what would have happened if everything had gone off!" Moser and Neubauer think back. The Florianis intervened just in time to prevent this.
"Was something concealed?"
How do the two of them feel about what happened back then? "It happened, that's tragic enough. Two deaths are terrible, of course. But just think what could have happened if the helicopter had crashed into the Kirtag crowd," says Kurt Moser. "Of course you wonder why the investigation took so long and why everything couldn't be clarified. Are they trying to hide something? It must be terrible, especially for the relatives," says Helmut Neubauer.
Why did the helicopter crash? This question kept the authorities busy for years. Criticism was voiced that the investigation was being deliberately dragged out. Recently, the final report of the Federal Safety Investigation Board was published, in which the crash was investigated. It describes: At midday, the pilot and a crew member took off from Graz Airport. The reason was a search flight for a missing person. A few minutes later, the pilot landed at the Frauental sports field to pick up a police officer who was familiar with the area. After take-off, a crew member noticed a metallic noise and a loud acoustic warning signal. The helicopter then rapidly lost altitude, touched a house near the chimney and crashed at a steep angle into a meadow.
Witnesses spoke of banging noises and the helicopter spinning around its own vertical axis several times and finally crashing into the ground.
Final report on the course of the accident is available
Only now, 15 years later, has the Federal Safety Investigation Board submitted a final report. The cause of the crash was found to be insufficient altitude. This made it impossible to automatically activate the rotation as an emergency measure. To explain: auto-rotation prevents the aircraft from crashing to the ground without braking in the event of an engine failure. However, this is only possible at a sufficient altitude.
Although the report explains some of the reasons for the crash, the cause could not be fully clarified. For example, it is unclear why the pilot chose an emergency landing site that he would not have been able to reach under the circumstances. It was also not possible to establish why the engine failed. Several other points also remain unanswered.
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