Chopper Accident Kills Pilot

PACKERS BEND, Alabama - A Fort Rucker instructor pilot was killed this afternoon in what the army is calling a "mishap". It involves the AH-64D Longbow Apache helicopter on a routine training mission over Monroe County that went terribly wrong.



In a field in the northwest corner of Monroe County, an investigation is underway.

"There was a mishap with a AH-64D Longbow Apache helicopter with a flight of two on a routine training flight," says Ft. Rucker public affairs officer Lisa Eichhorn. That mishap, killed a man. "What I can tell you, we do have one fatality the instructor pilot was killed in the incident the student pilot was unharmed."

Folks who live in the area tells us what the military wouldn't that the choppers were very flying very low over the river when one of the choppers struck a cable that was stretched across the river that guided the ferry here.

"I told Phillip, he is going to hit the cable." Steve Barton was on the river with his fishing buddy Phillip Bryant.

"They were like a boat coming up the river," says Bryant, "They were that low, if you had a cane pole in the fishing boat you could have touched the bottom of the helicopter."

They watched in disbelief as the choppers headed straight for the ferry cable hanging about 50 feet above the Alabama River. "Instantly they hit. I was expecting it to flip and go in the river and we just dropped what we were doing and within a minute we were there but the helicopter was still in control and he banked out and went over the trees out of our sight," says Barton.

"We seen the cable pop, we seen it fall, we seen it splash in the water. Steve said lets go, lets go we gotta get up there," says Bryant. Three minutes earlier and the two fishing buddies say they would have been under that cable.

"It was amazing what I thought had happened when he hit the cable, I thought it would fall on the ferry but it didn't," says Barton.

Barton said it appeared the pilot pulled up at the last minute but it was too late.

The army has not released the name of the instructor pilot to the public but has made contact with his next of kin. The student plot, who is Dutch and was on his final training mission, landed the damaged aircraft about two miles from where the accident happened.

Source: http://www.wkrg.com/alabama/article/chopper-accident-kills-pilot/1206534/Apr-28-2011_11-21-pm/

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