Three people died Thursday afternoon when a Robinson R22 training helicopter and an Airbus helicopter collided in mid-air near McMinnville Municipal Airport in Oregon, officials said. Both aircraft went down in a field next to a nearby highway, according to the county sheriff's office.
Authorities identified the two people aboard the Robinson R22 as 22-year-old flight instructor Maddie Aasbo, of Texas, and a student pilot from the United Kingdom whose name has not yet been released while officials work with the British consulate and the FBI to notify next of kin. The sole occupant of the Airbus helicopter was identified as 38-year-old Tyler Delane Sturdevant, of nearby Newberg.
The Robinson helicopter was operated by Jerry Trimble Helicopters, a flight training school based at the McMinnville airport. "Jerry Trimble Helicopters is deeply saddened to confirm that one of our aircraft was involved in an aviation incident this afternoon," the company said in a statement, adding that it was fully cooperating with investigators.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have both responded to the scene and are leading the investigation into what caused the collision. It was not immediately clear how the two aircraft came to converge in the airspace near the airport, a hub for flight training in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Authorities asked the public to avoid the area while the investigation continues.
McMinnville Municipal Airport is a general-aviation field roughly 40 miles southwest of Portland that hosts several flight schools and is best known to the wider public as the annual home of the Oregon International Air Show. Mid-air collisions involving training helicopters are rare but not unprecedented in US general aviation, and the NTSB typically examines radio communications, flight paths and any onboard tracking data as it works to reconstruct how two aircraft ended up on a collision course in daylight.
