Air force returns Yasur helicopters to active service after last month’s crash

The Israeli Air Force clears its fleet of heavy transport helicopters for flight today, over a month after one of the aircraft made a crash landing and caught fire due to a malfunction, the military says.

“Today, the air force’s fleet of Yasur helicopters gradually returned to flights, under a decision by air force commander Maj. Gen. Amikam Norkin,” the military says in a statement.

On November 26, the pilots of a Yasur heavy transport helicopter were forced to make an emergency landing in an open field in southern Israel following a technical failure in a gear connected to its left rotor, which caused a fire that destroyed the aircraft. The pilots’ quick actions — landing the helicopter in under a minute — were credited with allowing all 14 soldiers on board to escape the aircraft unscathed.

Norkin ordered an investigation of the incident and grounded the aging fleet of helicopters, which have been in service in the IAF since the 1960s.

The full probe into the malfunction has yet to be completed, the military says, but the initial findings provided sufficient information to allow the aircraft to return to service.

“The interim findings of the investigation provided a large amount of information on possible causes of the accident and the ways to safely return [the fleet] to flights, but has yet to definitively determine the cause of the malfunction in the Yasur helicopter,” the military says.

“[Norkin] stressed that these were only interim findings and ordered the completion of the investigation of the malfunction and instructed the fleet of Yasur helicopters to gradually return to training flights,” the IDF says.

— Judah Ari Gross