SUPERIOR, AZ — Four people have died after a helicopter crashed Friday morning in Superior, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The FAA said an MD 369FF private helicopter went down in the mountains near Telegraph Canyon around 11 a.m.
Officials say the helicopter took off from Pegasus Airpark in Queen Creek.
Authorities confirmed that a 59-year-old man from Queen Creek, who was piloting the helicopter and three female family members - one aged 22 and two aged 21 - died from the crash.
A family member of the victims has confirmed their identities to ABC15 as David McCarty, Katelyn Heideman, and Rachel and Faith McCarty.
"Preliminary evidence indicates a recreational slackline more than a kilometer long had been strung across the mountain range. An eyewitness who called 911 reported seeing the helicopter strike a portion of the line before falling to the bottom of the canyon," Pinal County Sheriff's Office said.
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash.
Aviation experts say the investigation will likely focus on the slack line the helicopter hit and what information was available to the pilot before takeoff.
“It is definitely difficult for a pilot flying at any rate of speed to see an obstruction like that,” said Tim Kiefer, a former air traffic controller, now professor at Prescott’s Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Kiefer says pilots are supposed to review safety alerts known as NOTAMs, short for “Notices to Airmen”, which are issued by the Federal Aviation Administration.
“They are required to be issued when there are things that might be hazardous to aviators or aviation,” Kiefer said.
According to the FAA, a NOTAM was issued on December 21 alerting pilots to an “obstruction tight rope” roughly 600 feet above ground level in the canyon near Superior.
However, Kiefer says NOTAMs can sometimes be missed.
“There can be five, six, seven pages of NOTAMs,” he said. “So things can be overlooked because of the amount of information put in that system.”
Kiefer also emphasized that the presence of a NOTAM does not automatically mean the pilot was at fault.
“That NOTAM may say what it is and what it’s supposed to do,” he explained. “But whoever put that line up may not have followed the procedure they were supposed to do. So there are a lot of different things at play here.”
In a statement posted on social media, the International Slackline Association said the highline involved in the crash was installed with aviation markers and that all proper FAA guidelines were followed.
