Maddie Aasbo, a 22-year-old flight instructor from Texas, was flying in a Robinson R22 with a student pilot from the United Kingdom near McMinnville Municipal Airport on Thursday. Tyler Sturdevant, 38, of Newberg, Oregon, was flying an Airbus H125 alone in the same airspace.
At around 2:15 p.m. local time, the helicopters collided in midair near the airport, about 35 miles southwest of Portland. All three people aboard were killed, Yamhill County Sheriff Sam Elliott announced at a news conference on Thursday night.
A witness on the roof of a nearby barn saw the aircraft collide and fall to the ground outside the airport perimeter. They came down in a privately owned farm field along Highway 233, near its intersection with SE Cruickshank Road southeast of McMinnville.
Aasbo and the 31-year-old student pilot were aboard a 1995 Robinson R22. The student pilot has yet to be publicly identified. Sturdevant was the sole occupant of a 2018 Airbus AS350 B3.
Photographs from the scene showed a green helicopter upside down in the field and a red helicopter badly damaged. The Oregon Department of Transportation closed Highway 233 approximately one mile west of Dayton after the crash.
One of the helicopters belonged to Jerry Trimble Helicopters, a flight school based at the airport. The company said one of its aircraft had been involved in an aviation incident and that it was fully cooperating with investigators.
The cause of the collision has yet to be determined. The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration said separately that they were investigating. The NTSB sent two investigators to the site and said the wreckage would be documented before being moved to a secure facility for further examination.
Comments (0)