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Investigators
to rebuild, examine
fatal tour helicopter
The aircraft was moving
Victims remembered By Gary Kubota
perpendicular to the
mountain when it hit
Maui correspondentWAILUKU -- Federal investigators today plan to reconstruct and examine the wreckage of a tour helicopter that crashed in the West Maui Mountains Friday morning, killing all seven people aboard it.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators plan to complete their work on Maui by tomorrow and finish a preliminary report in five days.
Lead investigator George Petterson said investigators are in the process of reconstructing the helicopter from the wreckage. The wreckage of the Blue Hawaiian Helicopters aircraft was transferred from Iao Valley to a hangar at the Kahului Airport yesterday.
"A lot was destroyed, but I feel we have it all," Petterson said.
Those listed as being on the flight were New Jersey resident William "Jack" Jordan, 51; his wife, Jan Herscovitz, 49; and his children Max, 17, and Lindsey, 16; pilot Larry Kirsch, 55, of Kihei; and 14-year-olds Natalie Prince and Whitney Wood, both of Fort Worth, Texas.
Authorities declined to confirm the identities until they obtain medical records from the U.S. mainland today.
Pacific Helicopter Tour official Don Cameron, who with the pilot found the wreckage Friday, said that based on what he saw of the crash site, the helicopter traveled fast enough to cause a large explosion when it hit the mountain.
"It was such a terminal velocity thing. The whole thing exploded," Cameron said. "There were no seats, no nothing. Everything burned."
Video of flight destroyed
Wayne Pollack, an air safety investigator, said the helicopter was moving perpendicular to the mountain when it struck the slope at the 2,900-foot elevation, a couple of hundred feet below the ridge.Pollack said the nearest weather report site was at Kahului Airport, about 10 miles from the crash site.
He said people in the air tower at Kahului were unable to see the West Maui Mountains near Iao Valley because of cloud cover that day.
Pollack said the video being taken by Blue Hawaiian was destroyed in the crash, and preliminary findings indicate there were no other aircraft in the vicinity that might have witnessed it.
Pollack indicated that investigators have not narrowed the investigation and are looking today at the pilot's employment and training and helicopter maintenance records.
He said there was no communication from the helicopter pilot once he left the airport.
Pollack said a radar transponder sent a signal every 4.7 seconds, and it showed the helicopter started a descent and in 10 seconds went from 3,600 feet to 3,100 feet at about 10:20 a.m., shortly before the crash.
The National Traffic Safety Board sent a health official to talk with the families of the victims to make sure they had mental health counseling.
Body identification difficult
Dr. Anthony Manoukian, the physician in charge of the autopsies, said he expects to be able to confirm the identities of the bodies today, after receiving dental X-rays and other information for the U.S. mainland."We have a pretty good idea who the people are. It's the clustering of ages that makes it difficult," Manoukian said.
Manoukian said a toxicology analysis including blood is being done on the pilot at the request of federal officials.
But he said he saw no indication to suggest any drug or alcohol problems.
"There's no reason for us to suggest anything like that," Manoukian said.
Blue Hawaiian vice president Patti Chevalier said she felt a deep sorrow for the families of those aboard the aircraft.
"This has been an extremely traumatic event," she said.
Chevalier said Kirsch had more than 12,000 hours of flying time and was a seasoned pilot with a "very professional attitude."
Tours to resume today
Asked about reports that Blue Hawaiian canceled flights on Thursday and what was the difference between Thursday and Friday when the crash occurred, Chevalier said the company cancels flights as soon as there are any weather concerns at all.Chevalier said the pilots have the discretion to cancel and change the course of flights, and she did not consider flying to be "difficult" in the Iao Valley.
"I don't think it's considered particularly treacherous," she said.
Blue Hawaiian Helicopters, which closed its operations on Saturday and yesterday, plans to resume flying tours on Maui today.
Friends, neighbors
By Treena Shapiro
remember victims
Star-BulletinSeton Hall University students and colleagues used to joke that William "Jack" Jordan spent so much time traveling to Hawaii that he was going to leave his job teaching economics and move here.
An avid scuba diver and windsurfer, Jordan frequently left his home on the New Jersey shore and traveled to the Caribbean whenever he got the chance, and may have even donned his scuba gear during his sabbatical in Australia, said his colleague in the economics department, Frank Tinari.
Jordan, 51, his wife, Jan Herscovitz, and his children Max, 17, and Linsey, 16, all of Shrewsbury, N.J., were among the seven killed Friday in the crash of a Blue Hawaiian Helicopters craft in Iao Valley on Maui.
Tinari recruited Jordan for his teaching position in 1977 at an economics conference. "He tended to be a little bit quieter than the others, but really was devoted to improving his teaching," Tinari said.
Dennis Camporeale, a 1999 Seton Hall graduate, said Jordan helped him make the decision to take a job as an investment banker at Bear Stearns.
"When I graduated I actually took a job at a small firm in New Jersey," Camporeale said. "He was actually the first person I called when I got the job from a big bank in New York. He gave me the go-ahead and that's all I needed. He had seen this stuff before, and I trusted his opinion."
Camporeale said Jordan was dedicated to his students, discussing course material with them outside class, in his office, at coffee shops, over a bite to eat. But he was also dedicated to his immediate family, and his extended family at the university.
Jordan and Max had been taking saxophone lessons together for the past year, with a private instructor teaching them in their home. "They were always playing duets together," Camporeale said.
"We used to always tease Jack about his son getting better than him. That was probably something he was very proud of, to see his son doing something like that. They took lessons once a week, and they took them very seriously," he said.
Max would have been a senior at the Christian Brothers Academy in Lincroft, N.J. He was looking at prospective colleges and probably would have gone into computer engineering.
Linsey, who just graduated from Shrewsbury Middle School and would have attended Red Bank Regional High School in the fall, was recalled fondly among her neighbors as a great baby sitter.
Caroline Dwyer, a neighbor of the Jordans, said that while Linsey did not baby-sit for her son, both she and her brother spent time with him. "The kids were just really nice kids, just sweet, nice kids."
"She was a nice girl. Their son was a great, compassionate, nice young man."
More than a thousand prayers went out for Natalie Prince and Whitney Wood at the First United Methodist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, yesterday. The two 14-year-olds also were aboard the Blue Hawaiian helicopter tour that ended in a crash in Iao Valley on Maui.
Prince and Wood had met at the church preschool when they were 4 years old and had been best friends ever since, even after Wood moved to Burleson, Texas. The mothers of both girls had worked at the church.
Dr. William Longsworth, associate minister for the church, said he had been in touch with both families since Friday. Prince's mother contacted him after the crash.
Prince was active in the church, Longsworth said. She was confirmed in the sixth grade and active in worship with her family.
Her parents would take her with them to do community work, he said. "She would go down and help her family. They provided food for families that needed it, clothing, and lunches for homeless people."
"She was a really, really nice girl, sweet and kind and compassionate, and was there for her families and always had a big smile on her face," he said.
