Helicopter crash pilot was texting before crash which killed him and pedestrian

A helicopter pilot had been texting before he hit a crane in fog, killing himself and a man on the ground, writes Ben Glaze in the Sunday People.

Pete Barnes, who flew choppers in films such as Bond movie Die Another Day, died when his copter clipped a crane’s arm, plunged 700ft to the street and burst into flames.

Rentokil worker Matthew Wood, 39, was also killed in the accident at Vauxhall, South London.
Mr Barnes’s last text was to tell a business client who had hired the chopper he could not pick him up in Elstree, Herts, due to bad weather.

The pilot had re-routed his Augusta A109E to land at Battersea when its rotors hit the crane next to one of Europe’s biggest residential towers. An Air Accidents Investigation Branch report -revealed: “The pilot sent five text messages and received five text messages ¬during the 25-minute flight.”

It said: “The Civil Aviation Authority acknowledges the utility of mobile phones but is concerned they can distract pilots from their primary role and should not be used except in an emergency.”

The messages from Mr Barnes, 50, shortly before 8am on January 16, 2013, as he flew from Redhill, Surrey, were to a pilot friend and the helicopter ¬operating firm as well as the client.

Dad-of-two Mr Barnes, of Mortimer, Berks, sent the last one four minutes before his death explaining the cloud over Elstree was too heavy to land. “Over Elstree no holes I’m afraid hdg back to Redhill least we tried chat in 10,” he wrote.

Mr Barnes, who ferried politicians and celebs around the UK, asked air traffic control to divert to Battersea Heliport and was en route when he crashed at St George Wharf.

Report author Julian Firth said it was uncertain whether sending and reading texts had distracted the pilot. But a few seconds before the crash he was in radio contact with air traffic control.

The report added: “It is possible, therefore, that the pilot was distracted by the act of changing frequency as he entered the turn ¬towards the building... it is unlikely he was distracted at the same time by composing a text message.”