Helicopter's hard landing caught on video

RUIDOSO, NM — A helicopter pilot was forced to make a rough landing at a ski resort in New Mexico.

No injuries were reported, but things could have been much worse.

Pete Hildebrand says the plan was to go ziplining at Ski Apache, but instead he ended up filming the helicopter.

As the helicopter attempted to land on the top of the hill, it hit hard, bounced up and started sliding down the hill.

Hildebrand says everyone just froze, not knowing what was going to happen next. "I thought that helicopter was going to tip over and hit the rotors and we were all going to have to duck."

Fortunately, the chopper did not roll over, but Hildebrand says it was too damaged to take back off.

KOAT's Sky 7 Helicopter pilot Neil Lawson looked at the video. "As he came onto his final approach he just seemed to be descending a lot more quickly than I've seen other people do at that altitude."

The base of Ski Apache is more than 9,000 feet.

"High altitudes and high temperatures both make the air thinner.  That's going to reduce the amount of lift that you get out of your blades and it's going to require more power to maintain your altitude," said Lawson.

Lawson says the thin air can make it harder to slow down when landing. "He may simply not have had enough power from his engine to maintain enough lift to slow him down."

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Lawson says after the initial hard landing, he believes the pilot did everything right to keep the chopper from flipping over and crashing. "He kept control of the aircraft at that point.  Got the aircraft settled down, level and set back down on the ground in a controlled manner."

FAA investigators say they're still investigating what caused the chopper to land the way it did.

KOAT reached out to the company that owns the chopper -- Trans Aero Medevac --  but as of Monday night, has not heard back.

The Lincoln County Sheriff's Office says the man who needed the chopper fell from a distance of about 15 feet, but have not said what he fell from.

CNN/KOAT