A Weather-related Fatal Chopper Crash

BROWNSVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – A medical helicopter crashed in a rainy field in western Tennessee early Thursday, killing three crew members on a return trip from delivering a patient. There were no survivors.

Tennessee Emergency Management Agency spokesman Jeremy Heidt in Nashville said the flight crashed near Brownsville during a rainstorm shortly after 6 a.m. CDT.

Heidt said the helicopter had flown a patient from Parsons to Jackson-Madison County General Hospital and was returning to its base in Brownsville when it went down a few miles from its destination. All those aboard were crew members.

“The pilot was not in contact with air traffic controllers at the time of the crash and there had been no indication of problems,” said Lynn Lunsford, a spokesman with the Federal Aviation Administration in Fort Worth, Texas. Lunsford said the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating.

“They (investigators) will look at everything from the aircraft to the weather,” Lunsford said. “As the NTSB says, ‘man, machine and environment.”‘

Rich Okulski, a supervisor in the Memphis office of the National Weather Service, said there were thunderstorms in the area at the time and weather could have played a role in the crash.

Okulski said the agency doesn’t have an observer in Brownsville. But at the time of the crash, a thunderstorm was in progress at McKellar-Sipes Regional Airport in Jackson, about 25 miles east of Brownsville, and a line of thunderstorms had cleared Memphis, about 55 miles southwest.

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