On March 26, an Airborne Aviation doors-off helicopter crashed off Kalalau Beach on Kauai’s Na Pali Coast, killing three people and leaving two survivors. Kauai police identified the third victim Monday as Oksana Pihol, 40, a Ukrainian national.
What makes the FlightAware ADS-B data worth looking at is not just the slowdown on the fatal flight, but also the fact that similar sharp slowdowns appear on earlier flights by the same helicopter, including the tour just before the crash.
Beat of Hawaii has covered this crash from the first night in The Kauai Helicopter Company Visitors Trusted Most Crashed On Na Pali Coast, and again in Kauai Helicopter Crash: The Pilot Tried To Reach Shore. One Survivor Was Trapped For Over An Hour.
What the publicly available flight data now adds is a pattern that neither of those articles had.
What the flight data shows.
Flight records show N715KV typically flew five to six tours a day, with each tour lasting about 40 to 70 minutes. On March 26, this helicopter had already completed five flights before the one that ended off Kalalau Beach. AIRMET Tango, a turbulence advisory, was active across all Hawaii islands on March 26. That is part of the weather backdrop investigators are now examining.
We looked at FlightAware ADS-B data for the fatal flight, the tour immediately before it, and earlier flights by the same helicopter on March 25. The same kind of slowdown pattern appears more than once in the same general area, which is why the data is useful but not conclusive.
The helicopter departed Lihue at 3:13 p.m. HST. It started out at 81 knots at 700 feet, then climbed and accelerated normally. By 3:18 p.m., it had reached 125 knots at 2,200 feet. For most of the flight, it stayed in a fairly normal band, generally between 90 and 120 knots at altitudes from roughly 2,200 to 4,100 feet.
At 3:30 p.m., the speed dropped to 30 knots at 3,500 feet, down from 110 knots one minute earlier. The FlightAware record is in knots, not miles per hour. Thirty knots is about 34 mph.
The aircraft did not stay there. At 3:31 p.m., the speed returned to 80 knots, and the altitude rose to 4,100 feet. At 3:32 p.m., it was back to 110 knots at 3,100 feet. The last recorded data point came at 3:34 p.m., showing 120 knots at 1,500 feet heading 298 degrees. After that, the radar trail stops. The crash itself was reported at 3:45 p.m.
The prior fifth tour of that day shows the same pattern. At 2:08 p.m., one flight earlier, the aircraft dropped to 30 knots at 3,400 feet, then recovered to 60 knots at 4,000 feet and back to 110 knots within two minutes. Then at 2:34 p.m., it dropped to 49 knots at 3,000 feet, and one minute later, it was down to 6 knots at the same altitude before recovering again.
FlightAware data from March 25 (the day before the crash) shows the same aircraft with similar slowdowns at altitude in the same general area, dropping to 19 knots at 2,700 feet at 3:44 p.m. before recovering speed, then dropping again to 47 knots at 1,500 feet at 3:49 p.m. before recovering speed again.
Beat of Hawaii is not an aviation authority, and we are not drawing conclusions from this data. We are presenting what the publicly available FlightAware ADS-B records show across multiple flights on different days for tail number N715KV, and we are leaving the interpretation to the NTSB investigators now on Kauai.
None of that proves cause. Sharp slowdowns on tour helicopters can reflect wind events, deliberate maneuvers, or tracking artifacts. The data across multiple flights and days raises the question of whether this is simply a normal characteristic of how this route appears in FlightAware rather than a warning sign unique to the fatal flight. The NTSB will determine what, if anything, it means.
What the aircraft was and where it came from.
The helicopter was a 1979 McDonnell Douglas MD-500 that previously flew in Canada under registration C-GPCE. It once carried flotation tanks sized for water landings. It came to Hawaii without that setup and crashed into the ocean about 100 yards offshore of Kalalau Beach.
FAA records list the owner as AA Leasing LP of Kilauea, not Airborne Aviation directly. A 2020 BLNR meeting record identifies the owners as Brandon and Delzelle Miranda.
What investigators have that they rarely get.
The NTSB now has something it does not usually get in Hawaii helicopter crash investigations: two survivors from inside the aircraft. Many of Hawaii’s fatal helicopter crashes have left investigators with wreckage, weather, radar, maintenance, and witness accounts from bystanders. This time, there are also people who were on board and survived.
What investigators will see in the ADS-B data is a pattern that appeared across multiple flights on multiple days in the same area. Whether the fatal flight’s performance was meaningfully different from the others or this is simply how the route appears in the data, the investigation will have to sort it out. The NTSB preliminary report is expected within about a month.
As of April 6, the Airborne Aviation booking page shows tours resuming, with multiple daily departure times already listed. Tours are scheduled to return on April 18. The NTSB preliminary report is still weeks away.
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I’m by all means no helicopter expert but in theory air has to be drawn from below the helicopter to maintain lift. Therefore when closer to tall hillsides and such wouldn’t this also affect the speed? Or maybe along the cliff area’s there could have been a downdraft issue. The big question I would think is if this happened on a couple previous flights then why would you take the same flight pattern and risk the same situation? 30 knots down to 6 knots then back to normal. Who knows it’s a 46 year old helicopter made in 1979. Was that fact ever mentioned before anybody took this tour? Air fuel mixture problem at a certain altitude or just some maintenance issue.
Frankly that drop in speed, especially repeated on multiple trips, sounds like a pilot showing off how quickly they can slow the bird down. The MD500, like the OH-6 platform it was derived from, is a maneuverable little bird (military will get the inside joke there). If so, that will come out when the NTSB interviews the survivors and any passengers from previous flights.