Two helicopters collided in midair near McMinnville Municipal Airport in Oregon on Thursday afternoon and fell into a farm field, killing all three people on board, the Yamhill County Sheriff's Office said. Dispatchers took multiple calls from about 2:10 p.m. reporting the crash near the junction of Highway 233 and Southeast Cruickshank Road, southeast of the town, and Sheriff Sam Elliott placed the collision itself at about 2:15 p.m. local time. Both aircraft came down in a private field beside the highway, one of them left crumpled in pieces and the other lying upside down, with debris scattered across the field.
The sheriff's office identified the aircraft as a 1995 Robinson R22 and a 2018 Airbus AS350B3, the type the Federal Aviation Administration's statement called an H125. The National Transportation Safety Board said the Robinson was on an instructional flight and the Airbus was on a maintenance flight.
Sheriff Elliott named two of the dead at a news conference on Thursday evening. In the Robinson were flight instructor Maddie Aasbo, 22, of Texas, and a student pilot from the United Kingdom. The student's name has not been released: the sheriff's office says it is being withheld while officials work with the FBI and the consulate to notify the family. The sole occupant of the Airbus was Tyler Delane Sturdevant, 38, of Newberg. All three were found dead at the scene. An early FAA account carried in wire reports had placed the occupants the other way round — one person in the Robinson and two in the Airbus; the sheriff said his identifications came from the personnel who responded to the field, and they are the official record.
The Robinson was operated by Jerry Trimble Helicopters, the flight school based at the McMinnville airport where Aasbo worked as an instructor. The company said it was "deeply saddened to confirm that one of our aircraft was involved," sent its thoughts to the families, and said it is fully cooperating with investigators. Sturdevant was an experienced examiner pilot — an FAA designated pilot examiner and, according to his professional profile, director of operations for Precision Helicopters in Newberg. Leo Rodriguez, who called 911 from his family's vineyard, told KPTV he heard a big boom and metal breaking and looked up to see the two helicopters collide: "They twisted and fell to the ground."
Deputies, McMinnville police and Oregon State Police responded to the field, and the Oregon Department of Transportation closed a one-mile stretch of Highway 233, about a mile west of Dayton, with no time given for reopening. Airport manager John Paskell said the crash happened off airport property and the airport stayed open. The NTSB is leading the investigation, with the FAA also investigating; federal investigators reached the scene on Thursday night, and the sheriff's office said the wreckage will be documented before it is moved to a secure facility. No cause has been given, and officials have released nothing about the flights' paths or communications — how the two helicopters came to be in the same piece of sky on Thursday afternoon is the question the investigation now has to answer. Three people went up that afternoon: an instructor teaching, a student learning, and a veteran pilot on a maintenance flight. None of them came back.
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