What should have been the happiest day for David McCarty turned into unimaginable heartbreak. The 59-year-old pilot, set to marry his fiancée Joelleen Linstrom in just hours, took off on a quick sightseeing flight with his three young nieces. But in Arizona’s rugged Telegraph Canyon, disaster hit fast. Around 11 a.m. on January 2, 2026, their helicopter slammed into a slackline strung across the chasm, sending it plummeting to the ground. No one survived.
A tweet from X.
Authorities pieced together the grim sequence quickly. The private MD 369FF helicopter, owned by McCarty’s company Columbia Basin Helicopters, clipped the recreational highline during what was meant to be a fun family tour of the desert landscape. The impact sheared the rotor blades, and the chopper crashed into the canyon floor. Rescue teams from the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office hiked in through tough terrain, arriving by 5 p.m. to confirm the worst all four dead on site. The FAA and NTSBjumped in right away, with investigators on the ground by January 3 to sift through wreckage and records.
McCarty, from Baker City, Oregon, with a part-time home in Queen Creek, Arizona, wasn’t new to this. He’d founded his helicopter business in 1997, handling everything from firefighting to power-line work, and had flown this canyon route over 100 times.
“He just wanted to show his family around,”
A relative told local media. His nieces Rachel McCarty, 23; Faith McCarty, 21; and Katelyn Heideman, 22 had flown in from Oregon for the wedding. Sisters Rachel and Faith, along with cousin Katelyn, were full of promise.
“They had such bright futures,”
One family member shared. Elizabeth Gallup, sister to Rachel and Faith, posted on social media about the “unimaginable loss,” thanking supporters in their tight-knit Oregon communities like Echo and La Grande.
The culprit? A slackline, or highline a thin, tensioned webbing walkers balance on for thrills, stretched over a kilometer across the canyon in Tonto National Forest. No one was using it when the crash happened. The International Slackline Association stepped up, confirming in a statement that “aviation markers and lighting” were attached, the FAA had been notified, and a NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions, a pilot alert for hazards) was active. But NOTAMs can get buried in piles of updates, and pilots in low-altitude flights sometimes overlook them, especially in familiar spots.
As the dust settles, the FAA and NTSB dig deeper into pilot logs, weather, and that slackline’s setup. Answers could take months, even years. This loss isn’t just personal it’s sparking real talk across the U.S. about mixing adventure sports with everyday flights in remote areas. Wire strikes like this kill dozens yearly, per NTSB data from 1994-2018, and experts say better NOTAM tech is overdue. For now, a family’s joy is shattered, leaving communities reeling.
