Posted by A broken tail rotor was to blame for the 2018 crash that took the life of Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, the owner of Leicester City.
On Wednesday, investigators learned the cause of the collision.
After a Premier League match at the King Power Stadium, the helicopter carrying Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha and four others took off from the field’s center and climbed to an altitude of 430 feet. It did a 360-degree spin and crashed into a concrete step outside the stadium.
Srivaddhanaprabha, Nusara Suknamai, and Kaveporn Punpare, both club employees, as well as pilot Eric Swaffer and his partner Izabela Roza Lechowicz, perished in the crash.
The British government’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch conducted an investigation and found that the helicopter’s control system failed owing to a broken bearing in the tail rotor caused by the balls sliding instead of rolling due to pressure.
After the pilot’s pedals lost contact with the tail rotor, the helicopter banked sharply to the right and became “impossible” to control.
This was called “a catastrophic failure” in the report.
The pilot, identified as Swaffer, is believed to have uttered “I’ve no idea what’s going on” as the plane spiraled out of control.