{"id":37117,"date":"2022-11-23T20:43:28","date_gmt":"2022-11-24T03:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/helicopter-crashes-at-durango-la-plata-county-airport\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:35:35","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:35:35","slug":"helicopter-crashes-at-durango-la-plata-county-airport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/helicopter-crashes-at-durango-la-plata-county-airport\/","title":{"rendered":"Helicopter crashes at Durango-La Plata County Airport"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=b03b7e4f-85b6-5a85-a79a-dbdf77779df3&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1240\" alt=\"Emergency personnel respond to a helicopter crash Wednesday at the north end of Durango-La Plata County Airport. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Emergency personnel respond to a helicopter crash Wednesday at the north end of Durango-La Plata County Airport. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><p>Two people avoided serious injury in a helicopter crash Wednesday afternoon at Durango-La Plata County Airport.<\/p>\n<p>The crash occurred at 1:14 p.m. on the north end of the runway, said Tony Vicari, director of aviation at the airport. Two people were on board, both of whom escaped without injury, he said.<\/p>\n<p>The helicopter lay on its side with \u201cfairly significant damage,\u201d Vicari said.<\/p>\n<p>The crash occurred on one of the busiest travel days of the year \u2013 the day before Thanksgiving. The runway was closed for about one hour and 45 minutes and reopened at 2:55 p.m. Four commercial flights were delayed, including two United Airlines flights and two American Airlines flights.<\/p>\n<p>The runway closure was expected to cause \u201ccascading delays\u201d throughout the day, Vicari said.<\/p>\n<p>The helicopter belonged to Colorado Highland Helicopters, which is based at the Animas Air Park south of Durango. The helicopter took off from the air park at 12:28 p.m. and signaled its arrival to DRO at 1:07 p.m., according to FlightAware, a website that tracks aircraft movements across the country.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video wp-block-embed-youtube naviga-video-embed\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_1mqFlgpf-4\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>\u201cThey were doing training flights,\u201d Vicari said. \u201cIt\u2019s just normal for that operation at our airport.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He did not have any information about what may have caused the crash.<\/p>\n<p>Brandon Laird, owner and chief pilot of Highland Helicopters, said the helicopter was occupied by an \u201cFAA representative\u201d and a student pilot. The FAA representative was piloting the craft and demonstrating an emergency maneuver, called an autorotation landing, which is a transition from forward flight to the ground without power, Laird said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe blades are rotating under their own aerodynamic force and gliding similar to an airplane,\u201d he said. \u201cThe intent was to glide to the runway, which they did, but in that transition to touch the ground, he hit a little harder than what was intended.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A skid on the bottom of the aircraft broke away, as designed in high-impact situations, and the aircraft tipped onto its side, causing the blades to contact the ground and \u201ctore everything up,\u201d Laird said.<\/p>\n<p>The autorotation landing is \u201csomething that we teach and we practice, and it is a very, very dynamic maneuver,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re practicing for the potential eventuality of an engine failure, which would be scary, but that\u2019s something that we train diligently for. I do thousands of those a year, and this was just a mild misjudgment that resulted in a bit of a hard landing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Highland Helicopters has owned the MD 500 chopper since 2016, but the craft was built in 1971.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was our first machine that we started our business with,\u201d Laird said.<\/p>\n<p>The wind was blowing about 15 mph with gusts up to 25 mph about the time of the crash, said Norv Larson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, which maintains a weather station at the airport. But there were no other weather impediments, he said. Visibility was clear in excess of 10 miles.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"naviga-map\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?q=37.160663940177%2C-107.74500765922&amp;z=15&amp;output=embed\" width=\"100%\" height=\"400\" style=\"border:0;\" allowfullscreen loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Map\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n<p>The airport will be working with the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration to preserve the crash debris.<\/p>\n<p>It is not unusual for helicopters to fly up and down the runway similar to a fixed-wing aircraft, so \u201cthis is a normal maneuvering area for helicopters,\u201d Vicari said.<\/p>\n<p>Vicari could not immediately recall the last time the airport had an \u201calert 3,\u201d or an incident involving an actual crash.<\/p>\n<p>After loading the aircraft onto a trailer, the airport underwent an intensive cleaning process to ensure all debris was removed from the runway so that other aircraft could resume operations.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese types of accidents can go very differently, and we\u2019re very grateful \u2013 it\u2019s a good time to be grateful right before Thanksgiving \u2013 that this didn\u2019t go a different way,\u201d Vicari said.<\/p>\n<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=d34c1dbf-2b81-55bf-ad13-adfc4190eb66&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1226\" alt=\"The helicopter that crashed Wednesday at the north end of Durango-La Plata County Airport is lifted onto a trailer and removed so the airport can reopen. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">The helicopter that crashed Wednesday at the north end of Durango-La Plata County Airport is lifted onto a trailer and removed so the airport can reopen. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=4f73e52b-b0a9-5153-8cac-9cc26813a6de&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" alt=\"Emergency personnel respond to a helicopter crash on Wednesday at the north end of Durango-La Plata County Airport. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Emergency personnel respond to a helicopter crash on Wednesday at the north end of Durango-La Plata County Airport. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>on board; neither injured. Runway reopens after nearly two hours<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37118,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[874,915,1152,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-37117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-air-and-space-crash","tag-durango-la-plata-county-airport","tag-emergency-incident","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83557,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37117\/revisions\/83557"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37117"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=37117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}