6 Injured as Chopper Crashes on Catalina

Six people were injured, one seriously, when a tourist helicopter crashed Tuesday morning in a canyon on Santa Catalina Island.

A U.S. Coast Guard rescue helicopter, alerted by the tour company, found the downed aircraft about noon and ferried the injured to a Torrance hospital. The pilot, the seventh person aboard the aircraft, refused treatment and was left at the crash site, said Lt. Carol Stearns of the Coast Guard’s Los Angeles command center.

The pilot was later taken from the site by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies.

Stearns said the helicopter, operated by Island Express Helicopter Service, was in pieces at the bottom of Big Springs Canyon.

“It’s amazing anyone survived,” she said.

The passengers included a family of four from Sacramento and a husband and wife from Brazil. The Brazilian woman was the most seriously hurt, and was in stable condition. No names were released.

All were passengers on a Royal Caribbean Cruise ship that had docked at Santa Catalina en route to Mexico.

Island Express notified the Coast Guard at 11:35 a.m. that the sightseeing flight was 20 minutes overdue on its return. The Coast Guard diverted a helicopter from a training exercise near Dana Point.

Island Express officials refused to comment on the circumstances of the crash. The aircraft was an Aerospatiale 350-D.

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating. A spokeswoman said there was no immediate indication of the cause of the accident.