A helicopter crash that claimed the lives of two men last month appears to have occurred during a training manoeuvre aimed at dealing with engine failure in flight.
That is according to a preliminary report by the Air Accident Investigation Unit (AAIU) into the circumstances around the crash in which Niall Crosby, 46, and Antonin Kabelka, 48, were killed near Killucan, Co Westmeath, on Tuesday 30 July.
The preliminary 11-page report does not contain any analysis of conclusions.
A final report will be published in due course as the investigation into the incident continues.
The preliminary report states that the "accident appears to have occurred during a sixth autorotation manoeuvre" during the training flight.
The report says that 'autorotation' is part of flight training for trainee pilots and is a technique in how to respond to engine failure.
It says that an autorotative descent is a power-off manoeuvre in which the engine is no longer supplying power to the main rotor.
Mr Crosby, who lived in Glenageary, south Dublin, was the owner of the Canadian-made Bell Textron Jet Ranger X 505 and was training to fly it.
He had completed a flying time of two hours and 53 minutes on the Jet Ranger model before the flight on 30 July.
Mr Kabelka was the instructor on the flight that day.
Mr Crosby began his helicopter training on 1 July 2022 and completed the course on 17 June 2024.
The report records that up to that date, Mr Crosby had completed just over 100 hours of flying time and all of these hours were on a Robinson 44 helicopter.
The AAIU investigation spoke to a number of witnesses and recorded that no witness had actually observed the final moments of the helicopter's flight before it crashed on to the roof of a piggery outside the village of Killucan.
Witnesses variously described seeing the helicopter descending rapidly as if to land before climbing away again and "several described hearing the helicopter’s engine going quiet and then becoming loud again".
The report states that the descending and climbing manoeuvres are consistent with autorotation training, while the variation in engine sound is consistent with the helicopter operation alternating between the 'Idle' and 'Fly' modes when initiating and completing autorotations.
Czech national Mr Kabelka arrived in Ireland on 28 July to to conduct the training programme for the Jet Ranger, which was due to take place the following day for Mr Crosby and three other pilots.
Mr Crosby completed two training flights with Mr Kabelka on 29 July.
On the morning of 30 July, Mr Crosby completed another training flight for around 40 minutes with Mr Kabelka and, ahead of what was to be their final training flight, another student witnessed Mr Kabelka brief Mr Crosby on the part of the training syllabus relating to autorotation.
The two departed from Weston Airport at 1.58pm and the report records that at approximately 2.25pm, while operating in the vicinity of Killucan, Co Westmeath "and during what appears to have been a sixth practice autorotation, the helicopter impacted with the surface of an agricultural field".
It added: "It then travelled forwards at a height sufficient to clear a boundary fence and impacted with a gable wall of an agricultural building.
The report states that "the helicopter came to rest, in a nose-down orientation, in the wall and the roof of the building. Both occupants were fatally injured".
