Pilot’s Error Believed Cause of Crash Fatal to Stuntman

Pilot error probably was the cause of the fatal crash last Friday near Newhall of a helicopter being used in filming the television show “Airwolf,” federal investigators said Wednesday.

A team of investigators has all but ruled out malfunction of the craft, “and that seems to leave the human element, the pilot,” said Alan Crawford, National Transportation Safety Board senior inspector.

Earlier Wednesday, more than 500 stuntmen and other show business people attended the funeral for stuntman Reid Rondell, 22, who was burned to death in the fiery crash.

After the one-hour service in Newhall, stuntmen gathered at the Rondell family’s Canoga Park home “to drink and celebrate Reid’s life the way he would have wanted us to,” said Reid’s brother, R. A. Rondell, 28, who is stunt coordinator on the “T. J. Hooker” television show.

Pilot in Satisfactory Condition

Pilot Scott Maher, 36, who was pulled from the downed Bell 205 helicopter shortly before it burst into flames, remained in satisfactory condition Wednesday at Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital. He is being treated for a head injury, multiple fractures and scrapes and cuts.

Peter J. McKernan Jr., vice president of Jetcopters Inc., which employs Maher and owned the downed craft, said he found it “very, very difficult” to accept the preliminary finding of pilot error.

“Scott is a great pilot with years and years of experience, including thousands of hours of low-level flight such as this was,” McKernan said. “Until Scott regains his memory and all the facts are in, I can’t accept pilot error as the cause.”

The crash site is several miles from where actor Vic Morrow, 53, and two child actors were killed in a helicopter accident during filming of the movie “Twilight Zone.” They were killed when a special-effects explosion caused a low-flying helicopter to fall on them, federal investigators ruled.

The “Airwolf” accident occurred without warning on a clear day while Maher was piloting the helicopter at about 85 m.p.h. about 200 feet above gently rolling terrain in Pico Canyon, several miles west of Newhall.

McKernan said the helicopter was being filmed to provide stock footage for the action-adventure series, which stars Jan-Michael Vincent as pilot of a high-tech helicopter used on perilous missions for an unnamed government agency.

“On a difficulty scale of 1 to 10, I would say this sequence was less than a 1,” McKernan said.

Pilot Maher, who has told federal investigators he does not remember the crash, has declined to be interviewed.

Crawford said there was no film available of the actual crash, which occurred beyond view of ground crews and cameras.

But he said ground crews “saw nothing amiss seconds before the crash.”

Crawford said that, after two days of examining the wreckage at a Van Nuys hanger, he and investigators from the Federal Aviation Administration, Bell and Avco-Lycoming, manufacturer of the engine, are “pretty well satisfied the engine and helicopter itself were operating properly at the moment of impact.”

He said there were no plans to study the wreckage further.

Rondell, a third-generation stuntman, was eulogized by fellow stuntman Jeb Adams as a fun-loving daredevil for whom “the film business was a playground, and he loved it with a passion.”

Adams drew knowing laughter from mourners when he said Rondell, who began doing stunts at age 12, would typically arrive late at the set each morning and exuberantly ask, “Hey, what’s going on? Sorry I’m late.”

Rondell’s father, Ron, 48, has performed stunts for several decades and founded Stunts Unlimited, a leading provider of daredevils to the entertainment industry.

The dead man’s uncle, Ronnie, was the first in the family to enter the business when he began doing movie stunts in the 1920s.

Another uncle, film director and stuntman Ric Rondell, 42, said family members have accepted the danger because they love the work and the alternative is “working in a Bank of America someplace.”

He said stuntmen “take calculated risks. We try to be as professional and careful as we can . . . but some things are out of our control.”