Air accident investigators are sifting through the wreckage after a helicopter crash that killed two people.
A mayday signal was first sent from the craft as it flew over Poulton-le-Fylde, near Blackpool, Lancs.
Around 40 minutes later the aircraft was located at Barnaby Sands, an area of salt marsh on the Lancashire coast near Fleetwood.
The two male casualties were confirmed dead at the scene of the crash, Lancashire Police said. Their identities could not be released because families had yet to be informed. Police said the helicopter was on a training flight with a pilot. The learner was the passenger.
A spokesman from Ventbrook Air Ltd, a helicopter training school in Blackpool, paid tribute to the dead pilot. He said: "We don't know too much about the accident at the moment, the pilot was a really nice man and a good friend of mine, I knew him well. He was an experienced pilot and was flying with a student." He added: "We can confirm that the helicopter that went down was not one from Ventbrook."
The cause of the crash is still unknown but locals said the weather at the time was sunny with a slight wind. A spokeswoman for Blackpool International Airport said they had taken the Mayday call from the stricken helicopter prior to it coming down. But she said it was too early to determine if the helicopter had taken off from the airport.
The area where the helicopter came down, Barnaby Sands, is a nature reserve managed by the Lancashire Wildlife Trust. No one from the Trust saw the crash. It is a large area of salt marsh popular with bird watchers, but there are few houses or habitation in the vicinity.
Police secured the scene and an investigation was under way with the help of the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) to discover what caused the helicopter to crash. Lancashire force incident manager Nick Williams-Jones said that police had not yet recovered the bodies of the two men. He added: "The wreckage is still there and police will continue to assist the Air Accidents Investigation Branch."
