By Gbenga Oloniniran
GBENGA OLONINIRAN writes on fatal helicopter crashes that have killed, and injured many victims over the decades
Helicopter crashes have taken the lives of thousands of people including high-profile personalities over the decades.
Though it is not as frequent as road crashes, its effect can be very devastating given aircraft altitude to the ground. In most cases, passengers hardly survive the deadly accidents.
World leaders on Monday joined Iranians in mourning the death of President Ebrahim Raisi whose helicopter crashed into a fog-shrouded mountain on Sunday.
Raisi, 63; his foreign minister and seven others died when the aircraft went down in a remote area of northwestern Iran, where the wreckage was only found on Monday morning. They were all confirmed dead by state authorities.
The latest helicopter crash in Iran happens to be one of the most recent aircraft accidents widely reported.
It is coming in about three months after the death of a former Group Chief Executive Officer of Access Holdings Plc, Herbert Wigwe who died in a helicopter crash that took place in the United States in February. Wigwe’s death sparked concerns across the globe.
The CEO, his wife and son, as well as a former group chairman of Nigerian Exchange Group Plc, Abimbola Ogunbanjo, died in the crash in California.
Also, Chile’s former President Sebastian Pinera, a billionaire tycoon, died in a helicopter crash on February 6, 2024.
An Aljazeera report said Chile’s Interior Minister, Carolina Toha, confirmed the death of the former president but did not give details.
Chile’s national disaster agency SENAPRAD confirmed that three people were also injured.
In January 2020, United States basketball legend, Kobe Bryant, and his daughter, Gianna, were among nine people killed in a helicopter crash in the city of Calabasas, also in California.
Bryant, 41, and Gianna, 13, were travelling in a private helicopter when it went down and burst into flames, according to a report by BBC. The county sheriff said there were no survivors.
Bryant, a five-time NBA champion, played for the LA Lakers throughout his career and was considered one of the greatest players in the game’s history.
A former owner of Leicester City FC, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, also died when his helicopter crashed outside the stadium, according to his club which confirmed the incident.
The billionaire, two members of his staff, the pilot and a passenger were killed when the aircraft spiralled out of control and crashed in a fireball on October 28, 2018.
It had just cleared the King Power Stadium when it came down around 8:30pm.
A former Governor of Kaduna State, Patrick Yakowa, was killed in a helicopter crash along with other senior officials on December 15, 2012.
Yakowa and a former national security adviser, Gen. Owoye Azazi, were on the helicopter that came down in Bayelsa.
Between 1989 and 2024, over 1000 fatalities have been recorded in Nigeria in over 70 plane crashes, according to data from Geneva-based Bureau of Aircraft Accident Archives retrieved from its website on Wednesday.
The Bureau noted that the worst plane crash happened in Nigeria on June 3, 2012, when 159 persons were killed.
Mechanical failure and pilot error were blamed for the 2012 air crash, according to accident investigators in a report published in 2017, five years after the incident.
A Boeing MD-83 aircraft was carrying 153 passengers and crew when it crashed into a densely-populated area in the north of Lagos and burst into flames. Six people were killed on the ground.
The Accident Investigation Bureau said two engines on the doomed Dana Air flight from the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, failed mid-air before it crashed on approach to Lagos airport.
“Engine number one lost power 17 minutes into the flight, and thereafter on final approach, engine number two lost power and failed to respond to throttle movement on demand for increased power to sustain the aircraft in its flight configuration,” the report stated.
The “inappropriate omission of the use of the checklist and the crew’s inability to appreciate the severity of the power-related problem, and their subsequent failure to land at the nearest suitable airfield” also contributed to the crash, it added.
Associated Press also highlighted helicopter crashes in other countries that dated from 1977.
On August 1, 1977, a pilot whose U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960, Francis Gary Powers, was killed when the KNBC-TV news helicopter he was piloting ran out of fuel and crashed near Encino, California.
On July 23, 1982, actor Vic Morrow, star of the ABC series “Combat!” and child actors Myca Dinh and Renee Chen were killed on the ground when a helicopter crashed into them on the set of “Twilight Zone: The Movie” in Indian Dunes, California.
A helicopter carrying guitarist, singer and songwriter Stevie Vaughan slammed into a hillside in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, after an outdoor concert, killing Vaughan and all four others onboard on August 27, 1990, AP reported.
On October 25, 1991, Rock concert promoter Bill Graham and two other people died when their helicopter hit a utility tower and crashed near Vallejo, California.
Also, Davey Allison, who was the 1992 Daytona 500 winner, died on July 13, 1993, after a helicopter he was piloting crashed at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama.
On September 17, 2017, Troy Gentry, who was part of the country music duo Montgomery Gentry, was killed in a helicopter crash in Medford, New Jersey.
Helicopter crashes raise critical questions about safety measures, the role of weather conditions and risk mitigation strategies.
At the heart of some of the helicopter crashes could also be mechanical failures capable of compromising the integrity of these aerial vehicles.
In April that the family of the late Chairman of the Nigerian Exchange Group, Abimbola Ogunbanjo, who died in the helicopter crash alongside Wigwe, filed a lawsuit against the US helicopter company.
The Ogunbanjo family stated that the flight should have been grounded because of treacherous weather.
One of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit, Andrew Robb, noted that Ogunbanjo’s family were seeking “answers and accountability.”
“Helicopters do not do very well in snow and ice,” Robb told Associated Press. “This flight was entirely preventable, and we don’t know why they took off,” he added.
The US National Transportation Safety Board had confirmed that law enforcement and witnesses observed the helicopter transporting Wigwe engulfed in flames before it crashed.
In its report on the crash, the Board added that witnesses also reported the weather conditions in the area were “not good” and raining with a snow mix.
In Iran, pictures from the site of Raisi’s helicopter crash indicated poor weather conditions as the atmosphere was filled with fog that even made rescue officials find it difficult to get to the crash site in time.
Meanwhile, some reports raised questions about the mechanical condition of the helicopter that transported Raisi and other officials.
According to Aljazeera, the US-manufactured chopper – Two-blade Bell 212, that Raisi was travelling on, is believed to have been decades old.
The media house cited foreign sanctions on Iran which dated back to 1979 over its nuclear programme and anti-US stance.
This, it gathered, made it difficult for the country to obtain aircraft parts or new aircraft thereby frustrating the maintenance of old ones.
Since the first US sanctions on Iran 45 years ago, the Iranian economy has continued to take hits, and its airlines have in particular been impacted, the report published Monday stated.
Between 1979 and 2024, Iran plane crashes have killed over 2000 people in over 70 accidents, according to data from the Bureau of Aircraft Accident Archives retrieved from its website on Wednesday.
The worst aircraft accident in the country was in 1988 in which 290 fatalities were recorded.
On August 10, 2014, BBC reported that at least 38 people were killed when a small passenger plane crashed near the Iranian capital, Tehran.
The aircraft, which was heading to the eastern city of Tabas, went down after take-off in a residential area near Mehrabad airport on a Sunday morning.
The passengers included at least five children, according to the aviation authority.
Initial reports said all passengers on board the plane had been killed, but state media later reported that some passengers had been injured and transferred to hospital.
The report further highlighted that Iran had suffered a series of plane crashes, blamed on its ageing aircraft and poor maintenance record.
Iran is still flying planes bought before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, BBC notes in the report. It added that the international trade sanctions imposed on the country were after a hostage crisis during which 52 Americans were held captive in Tehran for 444 days.
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