Medical helicopter crash in Tennessee kills 3 crew

BROWNSVILLE, Tenn. — A medical helicopter crashed in a thunderstorm in western Tennessee early Thursday, killing a pilot and two nurses on a return trip from delivering a patient. There were no survivors.

Tennessee Emergency Management Agency spokesman Jeremy Heidt in Nashville said the flight crashed in a field near Brownsville around 6 a.m. CDT.

Haywood County Sheriff Melvin Bond said nearby factory workers reported seeing a large burst of lightning, followed by an orange glow in the area of the crash.

He said the helicopter crew was communicating with its base when radio contact was lost. The pilot had given no indication of a problem, he said.

"It was totally burnt," Bond said of the wreckage. Fire-blackened debris could be seen spread across part of the field and one rotor blade stuck straight up from the ground.

Authorities said the helicopter had flown a patient from Parsons to Jackson-Madison County General Hospital and was returning to its base in Brownsville when it went down a few miles from its destination.

"The pilot was not in contact with air traffic controllers at the time of the crash and there had been no indication of problems," said Lynn Lunsford, a spokesman with the Federal Aviation Administration in Fort Worth, Texas. Lunsford said the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating.

"They (investigators) will look at everything from the aircraft to the weather," Lunsford said. "As the NTSB says, 'man, machine and environment.'"

Rich Okulski, a supervisor in the Memphis office of the National Weather Service, said there were thunderstorms in the area at the time and weather could have played a role in the crash.

Okulski said the agency doesn't have an observer in Brownsville. But at the time of the crash, a thunderstorm was in progress at McKellar-Sipes Regional Airport in Jackson, about 25 miles east of Brownsville, and a line of thunderstorms had cleared Memphis, about 55 miles southwest.

Keith Holloway, a spokesman for the NTSB, said a team was leaving Washington at midday to examine the crash site. He said the team will be on site for three to five days and a preliminary report would be released about 10 days later.

The flight was operated by Hospital Wing, a nonprofit air medical transport service with headquarters in Memphis and branches in Oxford, Miss., and Brownsville. It operates five helicopters.