Helicopter drama – crash 15 years ago: “Suddenly there was a crash!”

March marked the 15th anniversary of the horrific helicopter crash in Deutschlandsberg. A police helicopter went in search of a missing person. But directly above the district capital, the plane lost altitude and crashed right next to a residential area. Just a few meters away, in the main square, thousands of people streamed through the fair. Meanwhile, Kurt Moser was sitting on the couch in his apartment. “I thought: what is that noise, something must have happened.” He walked to the window and saw the helicopter crash in the grass next to his house. Horrified, but without hesitation, he rushed down the stairs to the accident scene and began pulling the victims from the wreckage.

Helmut Neubauer says something similar: “I was at the fair with my daughter and walked to the car with her. I heard a helicopter and thought to myself, the sound doesn’t sound right at all.” Then he saw the shadow of the device and knew something was about to crash. The firefighter called his daughter and her school friend to quickly call 911 Meanwhile, he ran as fast as his legs could carry him to the scene and tried to save the three passengers. He was shocked to realize that he knew one of them: he was a popular member of the local police force.

The first responders were aware that there was a high risk of explosion during this operation due to the escaped kerosene. But: “In such a situation you just have to act,” they both agree. What still upsets her today are the thoughts of the onlookers who gathered around the scene of the incident. Some were about to relax and light a cigarette. “Absolute madness, what would have happened if everything had exploded!” Moser and Neubauer think back. Florianis intervened just in time to prevent this.

“Was there something hidden?”
How do the two deal with what happened then? “It happened, that’s tragic enough. Two deaths are of course terrible. But think of what could have happened if the helicopter had crashed into the Kirtag crowd,” says Kurt Moser. “Of course you wonder why the processing took so long and why not everything could be made clear. Do you want to hide something? “It must be terrible, especially for the relatives,” says Helmut Neubauer.

Why did the helicopter crash? This question preoccupied the authorities for years. There was criticism that the investigation was deliberately prolonged. The Federal Safety Investigation Board’s final report investigating the crash was recently released. It describes: Around noon the pilot and a crew member took off from Graz airport. The reason was a search flight for a missing person. A few minutes later the pilot landed at the Frauental sports field to pick up a local police officer. After takeoff, a crew member noticed a metallic noise and a loud audible warning chime. The helicopter then rapidly lost altitude, struck a house near the chimney edge and fell at a steep angle into a field.

Witnesses reported popping noises and the helicopter spinning around its vertical axis several times before crashing to the ground.

The final report on the accident is available
Only now, fifteen years later, has the Federal Security Research Center submitted a final report. The cause of the crash turned out to be a low altitude. This made it impossible to automatically activate rotation as an emergency measure. By way of explanation: Automatic rotation prevents the aircraft from crashing to the ground without braking in the event of an engine failure. However, this is only possible at a sufficient height.

Although the report explains some reasons for the crash, the cause could not be fully clarified. It is unclear why the pilot chose an emergency landing site that would have been inaccessible to him under these circumstances anyway. It was also no longer possible to determine why the engine failed. Some points also remain open.