Three Killed in Grand Canyon Helicopter Crash, Probe Underway

The helicopter was on a tour of the canyon with six British tourists on board.

Three tourists were killed as a helicopter crashed in the Grand Canyon on Saturday.

(Photo: iStock)

A tourist helicopter crashed in the Grand Canyon, Arizona, United States on Saturday, 10 February, killing three people and injuring four others, a federal aviation spokesman said.

According to AP, there were six British tourists on the helicopter, out of which three were killed, while the other three and the pilot managed to survive. The injured were airlifted to a Las Vegas hospital.

The helicopter was on a tour of the canyon, a popular tourist destination in the US, and more than a mile (1.6 km) deep, when it went down, a dispatcher for the Hualapai Department of Emergency Services told Phoenix television station KNXV.

He said that three people were killed and four had unknown injuries, and that authorities were possibly looking for one or two more people, the station reported.

The helicopter, an Eurocopter EC130 from Airbus, “crashed under unknown circumstances in the Grand Canyon” and suffered substantial damage, Allen Kenitzer, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, reported Reuters.

Local authorities say that at least seven people were on board the helicopter.

Allen Kenitzer

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash, Kenitzer said.

The helicopter belonged to the Papillon Airways, a Nevada-based company, which said it was willing to cooperate fully with investigators, reports AP.

(With inputs from Reuters and AP)