Wonder if Jack Stall played a role in this accident?
NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SAFETY BOARD REPORT: Details of helicopter crash released
Well-respected pilot known for wild rides
By K.C. HOWARD
REVIEW-JOURNAL
Masami Kato, 24, and Makiko Hatano, 23, smiled as they boarded a helicopter on Sept. 20, 2003, for a tour of the Grand Canyon.
The tourists from Japan spoke little English and were excited that their tour pilot, Takashi Mezaki, was from their homeland and spoke their language.
With cameras in hand, they were talking to Mezaki as he took off from Grand Canyon West Airport in Arizona, about 80 miles southeast of Las Vegas, Glenda Christine Springgate-Hill later told investigators.
The tour coordinator for Sundance Helicopters, the company that owned the helicopter, said she then saw the pilot hover oddly over a cliff for about 30 seconds, before descending into a canyon.
Mezaki was to fly the two women and four other passengers through Descent Canyon and land at a beach pad next to the Colorado River. But about two minutes after take-off, part of the helicopter hit the canyon wall. The helicopter crashed and burned on a ledge 1.5 miles from the airport, killing everyone aboard.
The last moments of life for the pilot and his passengers, are detailed in a National Transportation Safety Board report released on Monday. The document, which consists of hundreds of pages of interviews and reports and some pictures of Mezaki's last moments in the air, is a compilation of facts and does not include any analysis of the cause of the crash.
The report mentions that while Mezaki was a well-respected pilot, he also had a penchant for giving passengers a wild ride. Known as "Kamikaze" by some in tour helicopter circles, Mezaki scared numerous passengers by quickly and steeply descending his craft down into the canyon, close to the canyon walls, sometimes passing over other helicopters, according to the NTSB report.
At 10 a.m., about two hours before he died, Mezaki flew a group of four people through the canyon. Two of the men in the group heard Mezaki tell the woman in the passenger seat he hadn't slept in 27 hours. The four reported the helicopter approached the canyon, there it hovered for a few seconds, banked right and nose-dived. A woman riding in the front of the helicopter gave a "blood-curdling" scream the entire way down, one passenger said.
The NTSB report doesn't include names of the passengers who were interviewed, but the woman in the front, described as a 41-year-old homemaker, told investigators that she looked back and noticed her husband and the other couple looked "glued" to the rear window.
Her husband, a 42-year-old general contractor with a single-engine, private pilot license said he thought the wild ride from the Sundance pilot was "part of their thing."
He noticed a tip jar and sign in the center of the instrument panel and recalled he told Mezaki on the return trip out of the canyon, "I tip better if I get there alive."
He said the pilot was in control and did not look tired, impaired or drunk. He did not hear any unusual mechanical sounds and was later told by the owner of Sundance that the pilots weren't supposed to fly that way.
Jim Granquist, president of Sundance Helicopters, said pilots often are considered guilty until proven innocent after crashes. But he said Mezaki was "an excellent pilot; he was current on everything."
On Monday, he had not yet reviewed the NTSB report and declined to comment on it. He said the company is still unsure what caused the crash.
Owner of a flight school for 10 years and a former police officer, Mezaki began working for Sundance with more than 5,000 hours in the air. He commuted from his house in California, where he lived with his wife, 11-year-old and 9-year-old daughters and a 10-month-old baby, said Stacy Sheard, another Sundance pilot who was flying Sept. 20.
The morning of the crash he was showing her pictures of his children, before things got hectic. At the time of the accident, both pilots had been "two-hours under turning rotor blades," Sheard recalled.
She quit several days after the crash to work for a different helicopter company. She told NTSB investigators she didn't want to fly Descent Canyon again. She also said the tour coordinator, Springgate-Hill, pushed pilots hard. Mezaki flew with a towel behind his lower back and she had an inflated pillow to cushion her lower back from the constant jolts.
Mezaki and his wife lived a healthy life style according to his coworkers. He was a marathon runner and jogged almost every day for about an hour, according to his Nevada roommate.
Mezaki had been reprimanded in August 2001 after Sundance received a report that he had flown a similar route from Grand Canyon West Airport that included abrupt banks and violated other flight standards.
He was issued a letter that called for a one-week suspension without pay. But Tom Schaus, charter manager of Sundance, said the company was short pilots and opted to delay his suspension, eventually forgetting about it.
Several pilots quoted in the report theorized Mezaki may have encountered the "jack-stall" phenomenon.
In 2000, another pilot dove into the canyon at about 120 knots. He lost control of the helicopter and the rotor nearly hit the side of the canyon. He thought he was going to die and gave up steering, which ironically returned the controls to normal.
Investigators examined the helicopter's parts, including the engine, which was damaged by the impact and fire but otherwise seemed functional.
One of the only pieces unaffected by the crash, investigators noted, was Mezaki's small laminated placard, which was found outside the burned area. It read: "Gratuities are always appreciated."