The helicopter carrying coal billionaire Chris Cline began spinning before it plunged into the ocean near the Bahamas and killed everyone on board, federal authorities said on July 23.
The National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary report details the July 4 accident and its aftermath but doesn’t include a cause. Cline, his daughter Kameron and three of her friends died along with a pilot and copilot in the crash off Cline’s private Big Grand Cay island.
The aircraft was leaving the island to take two passengers to Florida for medical treatment, the NTSB said.
A witness saw the helicopter rotate to the left three to four times, followed by a whooshing noise and the sound of an impact, the report said. It was found upside-down in about 16 feet of water with its rotor blades separated. Investigators brought it to a secure site in the United States.
Flight and data recorders have been recovered and shipped to the NTSB in Washington for analysis, the Bahamas Air Accident Investigation Department has said.
Cline’s death led to eulogies from coal industry leaders, government officials, and academics, who described him as a visionary and generous philanthropist. He accumulated a $1.8 billion fortune from a career that he began years ago as a coal miner in southern West Virginia. Cline bought Big Grand Cay in 2014.
The full investigation into the crash could take up to two years, an NTSB spokesman said earlier this month.
Witness Speaks
Earlier this month, a witness recalled the harrowing moment that divers pulled billionaire Chris Cline’s body from a crashed helicopter off the coast of the Bahamas.
It “didn’t get very high,” Mathien McIntosh, who worked for Cline, was quoted by the New York Post as saying. “It went up and in about five it just ‘boop.’ The light just disappeared and it was a loud crash. It was a loud bang in the water.”
He and his brother-in-law “jumped in our boats and we went searching” at around 2:30 a.m.
“So we called back to the island and they said, ‘No, no, no. The chopper is back in the States.’ So, I said OK, fine,” he said.
McIntosh said he was searching for the wreck when it was found.
“Everybody just was in a daze. Man, it was just tears, you know? It was just tears,” he said. “Mr. Cline actually…was one of the first ones that came out” of the water, he added.
“Just then, a kid came out. It was four kids and they were about 19 to 21 years of age, kids in their prime. They had just graduated from college and came home to have fun and then boom; here today and gone tomorrow,” he recalled.
By Anthony Izaguirre
Epoch Times reporter Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
