A news helicopter has crashed in a commercial part of Los Angeles, killing three people – including the veteran pilot and an aerial photojournalist-reporter – and injuring others, officials say.​‌

The Eurocopter AS350, working for stations NBC4 and Telemundo 52, crashed Tuesday evening (local time) while providing coverage of a fatal bus collision in Chatsworth, a suburban neighbourhood about 25 miles (40km) northwest of downtown, the stations said.​

The cause of the crash is unknown.

Video from the helicopter, showing the view outside as the aircraft descended to the ground, includes sounds of the engine losing power and a warning alarm seemingly alerting the pilot to the main blades slowing down, according to an analysis by CNN Aviation Correspondent Pete Muntean.

So far, that video is “probably the most important evidence that we have discovered,” said Fabian Salazar, National Transportation Safety Board investigator-in-charge, at a news conference Wednesday.

In the video, sounds can be clearly heard that are “consistent with the engine changing its speed” as well as tones that are likely advisories being sent to the pilot, Salazar said.

Investigators from the NTSB, which is leading the probe into the wreck, were on scene Wednesday. The Federal Aviation Administration is also involved in the investigation, fire department officials said.

The NTSB is also investigating the bus crash. The SUV driver involved in the vehicle crash was arrested on suspicion of murder, The Associated Press reported.

The use of helicopters for news coverage – especially in congested airspace – has always involved danger and risk. A prominent feature of news coverage in many US cities, they are especially well known in LA, where stations frequently break into regular programming to provide a steady stream of high-speed car chases.

In New Jersey in 2023, two news crew members were killed when their helicopter went down in a wooded area on the way back from an assignment. And in 2022, a helicopter crash left a pilot and a TV meteorologist dead in Charlotte, North Carolina.

After Tuesday’s crash, the NBC station identified the helicopter team as pilot George Marciniw and Eliana Moreno, an aerial photojournalist and reporter. A pedestrian in a parking lot, Edy Gutierrez Mejia, also died, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner confirmed. At least two others were taken to the hospital with injuries, Los Angeles Fire Department Captain Branden Silverman and other officials said.

Earlier Tuesday evening, NBC4 anchor Colleen Williams said the station had lost contact with its crew. Williams then confirmed live on air the crash involved its helicopter team – telling viewers, “We are going to take a couple of minutes to think about that, to process and to regroup” – before the station switched temporarily to other programming.

Flames and thick plumes of smoke billowed from the crash site between two commercial buildings, videos showed. Two storage containers and four vehicles were damaged, LAFD said in a statement. More than 70 firefighters responded, and the fire was put out, LAFD’s Captain Rico Gross said.

The helicopter was “pretty well destroyed,” Silverman said. It was built in 2004, FAA records show.

“There are serious questions about what happened tonight,” Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors member Lindsey Horvath said at a Tuesday news conference. “Tonight is not the time to speculate about those answers; tonight is the time to care for the people who are hurting, to support our first responders and to stand together as a community.”

A preliminary report on the crash will be available in 30 days, followed by a final report detailing the probable cause of the accident, which can take up to 18 months, Salazar said Wednesday.

While video from the helicopter is the most important evidence as of yet, Salazar said, investigators are working with the owners of nearby buildings to obtain security camera footage.

“We’re working towards interviews with witnesses, and in gathering that factual data, we’ll be able to paint a better picture of the actual accident sequence,” he said.

Despite damage, there is still “a lot of physical evidence that will help us to get to the point where we’re analyzing that factual data and getting to a probable cause,” Salazar added.

The fatal accident shook the media community in a city where extensive and competitive aerial coverage of news stories is a ubiquitous part of the local TV landscape.

The news helicopter was invented by an LA station, when KTLA debuted its “Telecopter” in 1958. The first live helicopter pursuit of a car chase followed in 1992, according to Los Angeles Magazine, as coverage of a fleeing suspect proved so popular, viewers called to complain when a station went back to regular programming.

By the time OJ Simpson was spotted from the air in 1994, fleeing the police trying to serve him with arrest warrants for murder, LA stations had extensive experience with such chases – and the local media curiosity became a worldwide phenomenon.

Getting such shots often requires helicopters to squeeze into relatively tight airspace, adding to the risk.

In 2007, five TV choppers and a police helicopter hovered over the police pursuit in Phoenix of a stolen vehicle suspect. Pilots for aircraft covering the story for KTVK and KNXV were also serving as reporters when they lost track of each other and collided live on air, leaving four people dead. The NTSB could not determine fault in the crash.

Afterward, local stations began sharing aerial video in part so fewer helicopters would be near each other during breaking news, KNXV reported in 2017.

But it’s not only chase coverage that poses risk. In 1986, Jane Dornacker – traffic reporter for WNBC Radio, a New York sister station of KNBC – swam to safety after her helicopter crashed during a routine shift into the Hackensack River, the New York Times reported.

Only six months later, another helicopter Dornacker was riding in plunged into the Hudson River in the middle of a live report. The 40-year-old was pulled unconscious from the water and died at a hospital, the newspaper reported. The NTSB blamed the crash on improper maintenance of the contracted aircraft.

For KNBC, Tuesday’s crash isn’t the first fatal accident involving a helicopter. Francis Gary Powers, who famously was shot down in 1960 over the Soviet Union on a CIA mission, later worked as a KNBC helicopter pilot. He and a cameraman died in 1977 when the station’s Bell JetRanger II ran out of fuel midair.

In this week’s crash in LA, Moreno and Marciniw were employees of Angel City Air, the helicopter’s operator, and began flying together in 2023, according to NBC4. CNN has reached out to Angel City Air.

Born in Orange County, Moreno graduated from Chapman University in 2010 with a degree in broadcast journalism and political science, NBC4 reported. She joined Angel City Air in September 2010 and since then had reported for several regional outlets.

Marciniw, who grew up in Southern California, was a 1974 graduate of Burbank High School, north of Los Angeles, NBC4 reported.

Moreno and Marciniw worked closely on stories over the years, with both sharing photos together, their social media accounts showed.

Under the username, eli_in_the_heli, Moreno gave viewers an inside look into her reporting from the sky. She explained how she often operated the camera attached to the front of the helicopter while narrating from inside the aircraft as the pilot navigated through coverage of brush fires, shootings and other pursuits all over town.

Moreno and Marciniw’s NBC4 team is heartbroken, their colleague, Lynette Romero, told NBC’s Today show Wednesday morning.

“They were both doing what they loved so much, and for me, that’s comfort in knowing how happy they were. They loved breaking news, and they loved being in News Chopper 4.”

Marciniw had deep roots in Burbank, where he grew up, and Moreno – who was engaged to be married – came from a big, proud family, Romero said.

“Our viewers are grieving, too. They lost somebody who they knew very intimately. When you have that voice of a news chopper reporter in your ear, it’s a very intimate relationship, right? They’re telling you exactly what they’re seeing, and you can hear it in their voice,” Romero said.

“This is a very, very, very tragic day in Los Angeles,” Mayor Karen Bass said at the scene, referring to both the helicopter crash and the deadly bus collision, which left two people dead. “My heart certainly goes out to the family and friends of all of those that we lost.”

“Our hearts are with the victims and families of tonight’s devastating Metro bus and helicopter crashes in Chatsworth, and with the entire NBC4 family,” California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote on Facebook.

“We are deeply saddened to share that a helicopter providing aerial news coverage for NBC4 and Telemundo 52 was involved in a fatal accident in Los Angeles on Tuesday evening,” the stations said in a joint statement.

Source: CNN & RNZ