NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

Italy grounds pope choppers after crash in France

Nov. 12, 2008

ROME (AP) — Italy has grounded the helicopters it uses to carry Pope Benedict XVI, the air force said Wednesday, after a similar aircraft crashed in France last month.

An investigation of the Oct. 23 incident, in which eight people aboard were killed, showed that a blade of the helicopter's main rotor broke off, causing the aircraft also to lose its tail engine and crash, an air force statement said.

The HH-3F helicopter, used for search and rescue operations, went down in northeastern France while en route to a multinational training exercise in Belgium.

The air force said that until it becomes clear why the rotor blade broke off, its 35 HH-3F models will remain grounded, along with its two SH-3D helicopters, which have similar rotors and are used by the pope for short trips within Italy.

Experts are taking X-ray images of all rotor blades to look for possible structural faults, air force spokesman Col. Amedeo Magnani said.

He said this was the first incident of its kind in the model's 30 years of operation. The crashed helicopter had been refurbished in 2006 and the broken blade was at about half of its expected lifetime, Magnani told The Associated Press by telephone.

Benedict uses the SH-3Ds mainly to travel between the Vatican and his summer residence of Castel Gandolfo in the hills south of Rome, Magnani said.

The air force has been using other helicopters for its search and rescue service and Magnani said a different aircraft would also be found for the pontiff if necessary.