Renowned US aviation lawyer says chopper crash that killed Wigwe may be avoidable

Robert Clifford, an internationally recognised aviation lawyer in the United States, has reacted to the tragic helicopter crash that led to the death of Nigerian top banker Herbert Wigwe and five others.

Wigwe, the Group Chief Executive Officer of Access Holdings, alongside his wife, Chizoba, son, Chizi, a former Group Chairman of the Nigerian Exchange Group Plc, Abimbola Ogunbanjo, and two pilots died in a chopper crash late Friday, February 9, 2024.

The Airbus Eurocopter EC130 helicopter, heading from Palm Springs Airport in California to Boulder City, Nevada, about 80 miles from Las Vegas, crashed near Interstate 15 in Southern California's Mojave Desert.

According to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), logs from the California Highway Patrol show there was rain and snow in the area at the time of the crash. At the same time, witnesses also reported that it was raining with a "wintry mix" at the time of the crash.

In his reaction, Clifford, founder and senior partner of Clifford Law Offices in Chicago, said the crash may have been avoided given the known weather conditions at the time.

“The crash of a helicopter that killed six people, including a top Nigerian banker and his family along the California-Nevada border Friday night immediately strikes one as a tragedy that may have been avoided given the known weather conditions at that time,” the lawyer said in a statement on Tuesday, February 13, 2024.

While describing the incident as horrific, Clifford said the NTSB investigators will deploy their expertise to determine the probable cause of the crash to conclude if it was avoidable.

“The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators will thoroughly examine all aspects of what led up to the crash and ultimately will use their expertise to determine the probable cause of this crash to see if it was avoidable.

“It is always a horrific tragedy when innocent lives are lost in an aviation disaster,” he added.

Meanwhile, the NTSB spokesman said the helicopter was not equipped with a cockpit voice recorder or a flight data recorder but that all the aircraft’s major components had been found.

Clifford is the lead counsel in the 2019 crash in Ethiopia of a Boeing 737 MAX8 that killed all 157 on board from 35 countries, including Nigerian-born Canadian academic and author Pius Adesanmi.