CBS12's News Helicopter Crashes In Boynton Beach; Two Spared
BOYNTON BEACH, FL (November 11, 2008) – WPEC-TV CBS12's news helicopter crashed this morning west of I-95 in an industrial park less than an hour after taking off, and both the pilot and the reporter on board were spared serious injuries.
WPEC-TV says veteran traffic reporter Paul Cavanaugh, 55, and pilot Takayuki Tanaka, 51, were transported to Bethesda Hospital for examination. When police arrived at the scene the pilot was already out of the aircraft and Cavanaugh was in the process of climbing out, witnesses said.
Photographs show the helicopter to be intact except for the very tip of the tail boom, which is by the boom and appears to have snapped off on impact. The scene was hosed down by foam by fire crews as a precaution.
WPEC-TV is calling the incident a "hard landing" rather than a crash. The traditional definition of a "hard landing" means the aircraft still had engine power, whereas a crash landing implies the engine may have stopped providing propulsion.
News director David Christopher told The Palm Beach Post that the pilot reported engine problems with the Bell Jet Ranger III and that he was searching for a place to land away from homes and power lines.
Reporter Cavanaugh told managers at the station that they were looking for a landing spot when the engine failed and they crashed. The aircraft came to rest in Aspen Industrial Park, north of Boynton Beach Boulevard.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating today's incident. The helicopter, registration number N281CB, is a Bell model 206B that was made in 1981, with one engine and a cabin that seats 5. It was powered by an Allison 250-C20 engine and is operated by Aircoastal Helicopters Inc. of Lantana, FL.
Today's crash site is only miles away from the spot where Cavanaugh crashed in another helicopter in 1988, and in that crash he was more seriously injured than today, The Palm Beach Post reports.
Cavanaugh was reporting traffic for WJNO-AM and WRMF-FM when the helicopter he was in lost a tail rotor blade and spun out of control for more than a mile before it crashed into a Palmetto tree, near I-95 and south of Blue Heron Boulevard. The cockpit was crushed and Cavanaugh's left ankle was broken, leaving him to recover in a wheelchair.
Cavanaugh is well-known in the Treasure Coast region, being the area's first airborne traffic reporter beginning in 1984, and his voice has been on the area's television and radio airwaves for decades.
There have been several news helicopter crashes lately where the journalists on board were not as fortunate as Cavanaugh and Tanaka were today.
In early October, KTRK-TV ABC13 News in Houston, TX, lost their SkyEye helicopter in a fiery crash north of Houston and photojournalist Dave Garrett, 36, and pilot John Downhower, 43, were both killed. That helicopter was a Bell 206-L4 leased from Helicopters Inc. of St. Louis, MO.
In 2007 two news helicopters following a police car chase collided with each other over downtown Phoenix, AZ, and crashed and exploded in a city park. Killed were KTVK-TV's photojournalist Jim Cox and pilot Scott Bowerbank, and KNXV-TV's photojournalist Rick Krolak and pilot Craig Smith.
Also in 2007, a helicopter on a photo shoot for a boating magaazine crashed into the ocean off the coast of Florida near Casey Key killing two photographers, Mark Copeland, 44, and Thomas Newby, 50. Pilot Mark Watters, 44, was seriously injured but survived the crash.
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