LOS ANGELES — Video recorded from the NBC4 helicopter moments before its fatal crash in Chatsworth is expected to be the National Transportation Safety Board’s most critical piece of evidence as investigators work to determine what caused the accident.
“The video that was actually taken while the reporter was doing live coverage, that video is probably the most important evidence that we have discovered so far,” Fabian Salazar, the NTSB investigator in charge, said during a Wednesday afternoon news conference.
Salazar said investigators will seek a “pristine copy” of the footage and send it to the agency’s laboratory for sound-spectrum analysis.
“In that recording, we are clearly hearing sounds that are consistent with the engine changing its speed, and we’re also hearing tones that are being generated that are likely advisories to the pilot,” Salazar said. He said laboratory experts will download and analyze the recording to establish the factual evidence available in the audio.
The NTSB’s immediate focus is collecting as much information as possible at the crash site and interviewing witnesses, Salazar said. Anyone with potentially relevant details is encouraged to contact the agency at witness@ntsb.gov.
Once work at the scene is complete, the helicopter will be moved to a secure facility for further examination, where investigators will attempt to recover any additional data from the wreckage. The probe will also include a review of the aircraft’s maintenance logbooks and weather conditions, he said.
Investigators are also seeking surveillance video from buildings near the Chatsworth crash site in an effort to build a complete timeline of what happened.
Salazar said the NTSB expects to release a preliminary report within 30 days. A final report identifying probable cause could take as long as 18 months, depending on the circumstances of the crash.
The helicopter went down between two commercial buildings along Mason Avenue at about 7 p.m. Tuesday. The crash occurred near the site of a deadly collision shortly beforehand, when an SUV struck the side of a Metro bus, killing two people.
NBC4 later confirmed the aircraft was the station’s helicopter. Reporter Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw were killed in the crash.
An LAFD spokesperson said a third person who was on the ground also died. Prior to the press conference on Wednesday, that third individual was identified.
The Los Angeles County medical examiner’s office identified that victims as 29-year-old Edy Gutierrez Mejia.
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In addition to the three people who died at the scene, one person nearby was taken to the hospital after suffering an apparent panic attack and another person was also hospitalized in unknown condition.
Expert talks about what may have caused the crash
Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said the alarm sounding in the helicopter’s final video sounds like the low rotor RPM warning horn that signals the main rotor is no longer spinning enough to keep the helicopter in the air.
“It just has all the earmarks of a potential loss of engine power and a dangerous decrease in the main rotor speed,” said Guzzetti who used to investigate crashes for both the NTSB and FAA.
Guzzetti said the pilot appeared to be trying to perform an emergency maneuver to use the wind to force the rotor to spin again much like a breeze turns a windmill. Doing that can create a bit of lift that could help cushion the impact, but Guzzetti said there would have been little opportunity to do that because the helicopter had been hovering at a low altitude beforehand.
“It’s a very unique form of flying. And the community is very good about lessons learned,” Guzzetti said. “And so because of that, you don’t hear about too many of those accidents. So they’re rare, but they do occur, just because the mission is a risky one.”
Other crashes involving news helicopters
The station said this is the second aviation tragedy in its history.
In 1977, a KNBC news helicopter crashed when it ran out of fuel while returning to the station after covering a wildfire in Santa Barbara, killing the pilot and camera operator. The pilot, former U.S. Air Force officer Francis Gary Powers, had been in the news years earlier when he was shot down and captured while flying a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union for the CIA, an ordeal portrayed in the movie “Bridge of Spies.”
There have been at least eight fatal crashes involving news helicopters in the U.S. since 2000, killing 16 people, according to a review of federal accident records and news accounts. They include a 2023 crash in a New Jersey forest that killed the pilot and a photographer aboard a helicopter used by Philadelphia station WPVI and a 2022 crash beside a Charlotte, North Carolina, interstate that killed a pilot and meteorologist during a training flight for WBTV.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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