Chopper crashes amid traffic

Disbelieving motorists watched as a helicopter disintegrated in mid-air and plummeted on to the congested Southern Motorway last night.

On board were two volunteer medics, thought to be aged 25 and 30, who were on their way to the Parachute Christian music festival in Matamata.

Last night, they were in Middlemore Hospital with serious injuries - the pilot in a critical condition and the passenger listed as serious.

Passing motorists cut the men from the wreckage. They linked hands to form a human stretcher to carry one to the roadside.

Incredibly, the traffic - a mix of rush-hour vehicles and Auckland Anniversary Weekend holidaymakers - avoided being hit by the flying debris that hurtled across the northbound lanes of the motorway about 100m from the Bombay off-ramp.

A witness told the Weekend Herald last night that the back rotor of the chopper broke loose just before the cockpit crumpled into the median barrier.

Late last night, family members of the two men gathered at the hospital waiting for news. Both men had suffered head and internal injuries.

The pilot, known only as Peter, is a volunteer trainee ambulance officer with EMT, an ambulance service specialising in sports and industrial events.

He had hired the two-seater helicopter - a Schweizer 269C, better known as a Hughes 300 or 269 - from Ardmore Helicopters to fly to Matamata for the music festival over the weekend.

The Civil Aviation Authority is investigating the accident.

The helicopter crash was the most serious in a string of accidents within 30 minutes and a few kilometres of one another on the Southern Motorway.

The chaos began at 4.20 pm, when a southbound truck carrying steel spilled some of its load near the Razorback Rd off-ramp.

Only 10 minutes later, an 8m boat was thrown across the motorway 2km away when the truck-trailer carrying it overturned.

Less than 20 minutes later, Raimona Marks and his wife, Raiha, and family were driving north to their home in Papakura after a holiday, when one of their two children spotted the helicopter hovering just above the motorway lights.

"We said, 'Well that's flying low,' and next thing it just dropped out of the sky," said Mrs Marks.

"It was quite scary - it looked like it was coming towards us."

First on the crash scene, Mr Marks jumped from the moving car driven by his wife and ran to the wreck.

Mr Marks, a former Army Territorial, grabbed a knife from truck driver Daniel Tepania and cut away the seatbelts holding the two helicopter passengers.

He then took a brand new queen-sized yellow duvet from his car and wrapped it around the seriously injured men.

A number of motorists with medical training - among them an off-duty nurse, a St John officer and a psychiatric nurse - were among the early arrivals at the scene and helped to take care of the injured.

Wreckage lay strewn across the northbound lanes of the motorway.

The tail of the helicopter rested alongside the windscreen, and the buckled cockpit straddled the median barrier.

Mr Tepania, driving his semi-articulated truck north to Auckland, had watched the back rotor of the chopper fly out of the sky and smash on to the side of the motorway.

As he returned his gaze to the road ahead, he saw the helicopter plunge, then crumple instantly on the median barrier.

Mr Tepania described it as "one horror of a mess." As he slammed on his brakes to avoid the wreckage, two cars crashed into his trailer. No one was injured.

Some witnesses believe that the weather - blustery winds and light rain - may have contributed to the crash.

It took three hours for southbound traffic to get from central Auckland to Bombay.

Both northbound and southbound lanes were closed around the accident site for nearly three hours.

While the motorway was closed, traffic was diverted onto Great South Rd between Drury and the Bombay interchange.

But the diversion also fell victim to traffic congestion when a logging truck jack-knifed and blocked the road.

One lane on each side of the motorway reopened at 7.30 pm, and traffic was flowing normally half an hour later.

The chief executive of EMT, Sean Coleman-Maynard, said the two men were not working at the time of the accident.

"These were just a couple of guys in a private helicopter. The pilot's quite an experienced helicopter pilot; he's trying to clock up some [air time] hours."

Mr Coleman-Maynard said the company had used "all of its resources" to transport the pilot's mother from the concert to the hospital, including organising an ambulance to meet her at the start of the Southern Motorway.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the boys," he said.

The Schweizer 269C is registered to Ardmore Flying School but has recently been sold to flight school company Ardmore Helicopters.

The company owns two of the aircraft and works closely with the Ardmore Flying School, offering flight training courses as well as chartering them out.

Ardmore Helicopters' owner, Frank Parker, said the pilot of the aircraft was a regular customer.

"He's a very good pilot who I have the utmost faith in."

Mr Parker said it was the first accident his firm's aircraft had been involved in.

Air accident investigators moved the helicopter from the motorway about 8.10 pm and took it to Ardmore Airport for inspection.

Emergency services worked at pace to clear debris and repair the smashed median barrier before police traffic blocks on the Southern Motorway about 9 pm.

- STAFF REPORTERS