FILE – Leicester City chairman, Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha / AP
LONDON (AP) — A damaged tail rotor was to blame for a helicopter crash that killed the owner of English soccer club Leicester and four others in 2018, an accident inquiry said Wednesday.
The Leonardo AW169 helicopter took off from the center of the field after a Premier League match at Leicester’s King Power Stadium and got to about 430 feet (130 meters) above the ground. Then it spun around and plummeted into a concrete step outside the stadium.
Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, who was Leicester’s owner at the time, along with club employees Nusara Suknamai and Kaveporn Punpare, pilot Eric Swaffer and Swaffer’s partner, Izabela Roza Lechowicz, were all killed in the accident.
An inquiry by the British government’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch found that the helicopter’s control system failed because a…
