Three killed in McMinnville helicopter collision; aircraft assignments corrected

They and Tyler Delane Sturdevant, the pilot of a second helicopter, were the only people aboard the two aircraft that collided in midair near McMinnville Municipal Airport on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026. All three died, Yamhill County Sheriff Sam Elliott said. He placed the collision at approximately 2:15 p.m. Pacific daylight time.⁠1⁠3

The deaths resolve the most urgent uncertainty in our earlier coverage. In our Oct. 29 evening report—aired at 00:48 UTC on Oct. 30—we reported that three people were aboard but their conditions had not been disclosed. We also reported the preliminary federal account of how those people were divided between the helicopters. Elliott’s updated account reverses those assignments, and we are correcting them here.

According to Elliott’s account, Aasbo and the student were aboard the Robinson R22. Sturdevant, 38, of Newberg, was flying the Airbus H125. Elliott described the aircraft as a 1995 Robinson R22 and a 2018 Airbus H125; KATU’s account identified Sturdevant’s helicopter as an Airbus AS350B3.⁠1⁠3

The discrepancy is specific, not a disagreement over the total number aboard. In their Oct. 29 evening reports, KTVZ relayed Elliott’s assignment of two people to the Robinson and one to the Airbus, while Fox News carried preliminary Federal Aviation Administration information assigning one person to the Robinson and two to the Airbus. Both accounts total three. KATU also reported Elliott’s instructor-and-student pairing in the Robinson and noted that his information differed from the FAA’s earlier account.⁠1⁠2⁠3

We are using the sheriff’s updated, named assignments. No incident-specific federal explanation reconciling the difference has been established. The earlier reports that left the occupants’ conditions unknown have been superseded by the fatality announcement; they are not evidence of a competing death toll.

Jerry Trimble Helicopters, a helicopter training company, confirmed that one of its aircraft was involved. That confirmation does not establish that both helicopters belonged to the company or were operated by it. Nor does it establish the purpose of both flights. The presence of an instructor and student aboard one aircraft should not be stretched into an unsupported account of what either helicopter was doing before the collision.⁠1

Responders found the helicopters in a private farm field in rural Yamhill County near the airport. McMinnville lies about 35 miles southwest of Portland. The reported scene was near the airport, not on a runway.⁠31⁠6⁠2

The sheriff’s description of the crash vicinity changed. The initial notice placed it near Southeast Highway 154, also called Lafayette Highway, and Southeast Stringtown Road, southeast of McMinnville. A later release instead identified the vicinity of Southeast Amity-Dayton Highway, Highway 233, and Southeast Cruickshank Road. The later description updates the earlier one; neither intersection establishes the precise point where the helicopters met in the air or the position of each aircraft’s wreckage.⁠18⁠29

The emergency records also describe different milestones, not a single precisely measured collision time. An aircraft-emergency entry was timed at 2:09 p.m.; the later sheriff’s release said witnesses reported the crash to Yamhill Communications Agency at approximately 2:10 p.m. Earlier information placed the report to the sheriff’s office at 2:14 p.m., while other reporting described the emergency response around 2:15 p.m. Law enforcement officers, firefighters and medical responders attended the scene. Those entries do not establish a dispatch-to-arrival interval.⁠5⁠29⁠18⁠6

On the ground, Highway 233 closed in both directions about one mile west of Dayton. Nearby county roads were closed at emergency responders’ request, and drivers were told to use another route. The Statesman Journal also reported Highway 154 closed that afternoon. Initial accounts gave no reopening estimate.⁠1⁠2⁠5⁠6

Those were Thursday-afternoon restrictions, not a verified reading of road conditions afterward. No later reopening bulletin has been established here, and the precise closure limits, a named detour and the reopening times remain unresolved. McMinnville Municipal Airport continued operating Thursday: restricted road access did not mean the airport had shut down.⁠2

The National Transportation Safety Board is leading the investigation, with the FAA participating. That is an advance on the earliest account, which described the NTSB as gathering information. No incident-specific investigator arrival time, preliminary-report publication date or official cause finding has been established.⁠2⁠4⁠6

There is still no verified account of the helicopters’ flight paths, altitudes or radio communications. Nothing established so far supports assigning responsibility to a pilot, an operator, air traffic control or a mechanical failure. The identities and roles now reported give the loss a human outline; they do not explain the sequence that caused it.

The immediate outcome is no longer uncertain. An instructor, a student and another pilot died. The investigation’s central task is to establish how the two aircraft reached the same point—and why.