Man dies in helicopter crash near King Salmon

A Louisiana man was killed in a helicopter crash near King Salmon over the weekend.

According to authorities, the Bell 206B helicopter operated by Egli Air Haul took off from King Salmon at 9:18 a.m. Saturday with the pilot and four passengers on board.

The pilot was taking the passengers to a fishing spot when they crashed into the Naknek River about a quarter mile south of King Salmon Airport.

Accordingly Alaska State Police OfficersThe emergency services and Good Samaritans on site managed to pull the pilot and three passengers out of the water before the police arrived.

One of the passengers, 73-year-old Martin de Laureal, died in the crash. Clint Johnson, head of the National Transportation Safety Board in Alaska, said the four people rescued were fine, but de Laureal was trapped inside the helicopter when it crashed.

“The people suffered minor injuries, but unfortunately one person was trapped in the wreckage and remained underwater. He suffered fatal injuries,” Johnson said.

Accordingly www.nola.comDe Laureal was a retired businessman and community leader from New Orleans who was on a fishing trip in Alaska with friends.

Johnson said the cause of the crash was still under investigation.

“We're looking at three main areas: human, machine, environment,” he said. “The human is the human part, the human performance. The machine is the mechanical part and the environment in this case is the weather. All of those things are on the table. No conclusions have been reached yet and the NTSB is investigating and we plan to continue that investigation.”

Johnson said a recovery team would recover the helicopter from the river so investigators could examine it.

In addition, a meteorologist was assigned to assist the investigators to determine whether weather conditions played a role in the crash.