Helicopter Makes Hard Landing At Hospital Helipad

CLIFTON -- A medical helicopter made a hard landing at University Hospital early Tuesday morning.UH's director of aircraft Dudley Smith said the helicopter, owned by Patroleum Helicopters Inc., had dropped off a patient just after 5:30 a.m."As they were leaving, the pilot had a little bit of operational control problem with the aircraft and ended up doing a hard landing on our helipad," Smith said.
But the helicopter didn't make a clean landing on the pad, instead landing to the side, damaging its landing skids and tangling itself in a safety fence.The result left much of the helicopter dangling off the edge of the building.Firefighters were able to secure the helicopter and keep it from falling, then helped to pull it away from the ledge."The helicopter is obviously going to have to go off of our helipad. I don't think its going to be able to fly off so we have to look at operational issues as far as cranes or another helicopter and we'll do that over the next several days," Smith said.The flight crew was not hurt in the incident.