Hard helicopter landing injures 4 in Beijing
A helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing on Monday morning in the outskirts of Beijing, resulting in injuries to all four people aboard, according to municipal police.
The accident took place at around 11 am in a parking lot in Naidong, a village in Beijing’s Chaoyang district, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Public Security said in a statement.
Police said the mishap was likely due to mechanical failure. Police and firefighters quickly arrived on the scene and rushed the injured to hospital. The incident is under investigation, the statement said, and the extent of the injuries is not known.
Residents of the village filmed footage of the accident which showed a green helicopter appearing to lose control midair and then land awkwardly.
The helicopter damaged an unoccupied sedan during the accident, video clips showed.
Beijing Youth Daily reported that the aircraft is a Bell 429 GlobalRanger light-duty, twin-engine helicopter belonging to Reignwood Aviation, a general aviation firm based in the capital.
The newspaper quoted sources with knowledge of the accident as saying that the pilot executed an emergency landing away from residential buildings after experiencing mechanical malfunctioning. The company has set up a team to investigate the incident, according to the report.
Wu Peixin, an aviation industry observer in Beijing, said that helicopters normally have no parachutes or other escape devices because they usually fly close to the ground, and the spinning rotors present a grave danger to anyone jumping out. “It seems to me that the pilot handled the emergency rather well, because the helicopter didn’t crash too violently,” Wu said.