4 Die as Helicopter, Small Plane Collide Near Atlanta

A small airplane and a helicopter, both being flown by student pilots, collided over an airport runway Friday, crashing in flames and killing all four people aboard.

“The helicopter appeared to fly into the bottom of the Cessna” at an altitude of about 100 feet, said witness Dan Harbison. “They both fell in separate balls of flame and went down about 20 feet apart.”

The two aircraft, a Robinson R-22 Alpha helicopter and a two-seat Cessna 152, were practicing landing approaches at Fulton County Airport-Brown Field when they collided, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Christy Williams said.

The airport is a general aviation, or non-commercial, facility just west of Atlanta.

A student pilot and a flight instructor were on the airplane, said Williams and officials at Peachtree-DeKalb Flight Academy, which owned the plane. Neither would identify the victims.

Prestige Helicopters of Chamblee, which trains pilots, identified the dead in its leased helicopter as Dr. Ronald Lorber, an Atlanta orthodontist, and Richard Hull, an FAA examiner.

Prestige owner Ron Carroll said Lorber was a licensed helicopter pilot who was taking the test necessary to certify him to fly by instruments alone in cloudy conditions. However, the test did not require Lorber to fly by instruments alone or involve blocking his view out of the helicopter, he said.

Hull was an independent examiner who tested pilots and reported the results to the FAA, Carroll said.

He said the helicopter was owned by Rotor Leasing Corp. of Norcross.

Carroll said the pilots should have been alerted to each other’s presence by the airport tower, but the FAA said it did not know if the tower was in contact with the pilots or what was said. Officials from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating.