R44 crashed at Wuppertal, 4 injured

[Flying Bull]

Hi ppruners,

Today news aren´t so good - but not as bad as they could be...
Vier Verletzte bei Hubschrauber-Bruchlandung in Wuppertal - Wuppertal - Lokales - Westdeutsche Zeitung (http://www.wz-newsline.de/lokales/wuppertal/vier-verletzte-bei-hubschrauber-bruchlandung-in-wuppertal-1.972307)

The helicopter flew into a powerline, after he had made an intermediate stop due to motion sickness of one of the passengers.
All four occupants (three man, one woman) were injured and taken to hospital.
it seems, that there are no life threatining injuries.

Fly safe
"Flying Bull"

[mickjoebill]

Wonder if this R44 has the bladder upgrade?



Mickjoebill

[firebird_uk]

Or maybe it's had the rotor brake switch mod and that got rid of the ignition source?

[Spunk]

Reading some other articles about the accident it looks more like an unapproved off-airport landing:
Pilot claims that him plus 1 passenger left EDKB (Bonn-Hangelar) for a scenic fligtht. The passenger allegedly got sick. Pilot decides to make an off-airport landing and by coincidence the son of the pilot along with his girl-friend show up and they all get in the helicopter and fly away.:=:=:=

Thanks for yet another valuable contribution to helicopter safety in Germany.

[Camp Freddie]

Reading some other articles about the accident it looks more like an unapproved off-airport landing

Thanks for yet another valuable contribution to helicopter safety in Germany.

Whilst off Airport landings may be illegal in some states, there is an implication in the tone of the above posts, that off airport landings are fundamentally unsafe, clearly this is horse****, but it does make you wonder how a state can allow a form of aviation which it then legislates to prevent its most useful feature.

We complain about the UK a lot but at least they let you use a helicopter for what it was designed for (mostly)

[hueyracer]

Is this maybe another "very experienced PPL-H"-commercial pilot thing?

A similar accident happend last (?) year, when a PPL-pilot crashed during landing offside an airport with a singer on board..

[Spunk]

@ Camp Freddie
Whilst off Airport landings may be illegal in some states, there is an implication in the tone of the above posts that off airport landings are fundamentally unsafe

My intention was to point out the missing permission for an off-airport landing thus the "excuse" of a passenger being sick.

I didn't mean to state that off aiport landings are unsafe if properly executed but in Germany private pilots usually are not allowed to land at other places but approved airfields.
We all remember what happened the last time a private pilot intended to make an off airport landing without being trained the proper way:
R44 crashed - 4 heavily injured (http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/431642-r44-crashed-4-heavily-injured.html)

[GoodGrief]

I already mentioned that coincidence in another Forum.
The world has become an unsafer place with all the new EU regulation crap.
Today a PPL holder gets away with one hour of flight and a checkride to renew his licence. That is not even close to being enough.

There was a time when that requirement was 24 hours in 2 years.
At least that took the show off guys out of the sky because they didn't have the dough to pursue their "hobby".

[John R81]

Spunk

I don't think that was the last time a private pilot made an off-airfield landing. I made 5 myself just the weekend before this crash. And that's not all! I land in my garden, on the lawn at hotels and restraunts, last week it was a car park with high lighting poles and nearby power lines.

Getting a license must be so easy in Germany. I do remember being trained (and tested) here in UK on confined area assessment & approach, landing and take-off, and also on sloping ground landing / take off.

Helicopters are fantastic machines, but I think if I were restricted to airfield activity I would add wheels, wings and twist the rotor through 90 degrees.

[Arrrj]

Hear hear John,

I fly in AUS and we were trained properly to do "off airfield" landings and takeoffs in helicopters...isn't that what they were meant for ? :ugh: If we couldn't do that, then NO LICENCE !

I have just landed after taking some mates for lunch (off field landing x 3) and even my helipad is an off field landing (x4), with buildings, power lines, trees etc. Nice weather here too, lovely day.

Fair dinkum (look it up) off field landings are what it's all about.

The guy hit power lines, that can happen at "on field" landings in AUS ! Power lines run around airports too !

What a load of rubbish.

Thanks John for bringing some sense to the conversation.

Arrrj

[Torquetalk]

Getting a license must be so easy in Germany. I do remember being trained (and tested) here in UK on confined area assessment & approach, landing and take-off, and also on sloping ground landing / take off.

Bit OTT John. There are some important differences between UK and DE, not least of which being that PPLs cannot land off-airfield in DE without costly and time-consuming permissions. Confined areas is, of course, in the syllabus, but maybe it doesn't get the focus it might otherwise do if folk are likely to be landing off-field - as many PPLs in the UK do. As a point of comparision, German PPLs are more likely to have more practice in stuck pedal than their UK counterparts; a hangover from the pre-JAR syllabus and FIs teaching what they have been taught.

Then there are some accountability issues: UK has one national authority; Germany has a national authority for commercial pilots and activities, and umpteeen regional authorities for PPL licensing and local permissions. So when PPL decides to be a commercial pilot and crashes, who has juristiction?

This division in licensing also results in some daft stuff like PPLs being able to get permissions to do pleasure flights (off-field if you have the permissions...) and sell seats on those flights as long as they are not making more than their costs (which they shurley never do...).

It also results in situations like a commercial pilot landing a CAT B, performance class III helicopter on a hospital rooftop for the kiddies at Christmas, with permission. Until the national authority cited JAR-OPS and pulled rank (AOC holder, commercial pilot).

In my opinion incidents like this (these actually) seem to point more to a problem in standardisation and accountability.

TT

[John R81]

Apologies - I take your criticism onboard. That "jibe" was "toungue in cheek"; I am sure that the German program is just as rigorous as elsewhere in Europe.

I have no problem with observations that in this instance it was a landing that he "might" not have been allowed to make (I am sure that the point will be covered in the investigation), and hence that he was rule- braking. The thread seems to me to be drifting into a "CPL v PPL" bashing. My only point was that trained pilots who stay within their limits are safe. Pilots who fly outside their limits (well trained or not, CPL, PPL, ATPL) are unsafe. Off-airfield landings are no different. They bring different pressures, that's all.

So, in my (humble?) opinion, he crashed because he flew into a power line. Failing to be aware of and to deal with the power line was the element of poor airmanship. There are quite a few examples of PPLs and CPLs doing the same.

[Exo.]

Interesting insight into the workings of the German Aviation Authorit(ies) though!

[hueyracer]

Why did he fly into a powerline?

Maybe because he was landing at a spot where he was not allowed to land....not even allowed to be?

Maybe also a violation against the "no low flying" rule?

So far, only rumours....yes...

But we have seen many accidents during the past years...and most of them were lowtimers, disobeying rules......

What the CAA is making out of this, are more rules.......for commercial pilots...
Strange world!

[John R81]

If it was a violation of any low-flying rule then it had nothing to do with the landing - rule 5 (the low-flying rule in the UK) is waived for landing and take-off.

If the illegality of landing was the cause of the accident, then why do other machines - landing legally, sometimes hit power lines? Clearly it was not the cause; it was something in a chain of events that culminated in a crash. If he had not done so then he would not have been in the airspace with the power lines and could not have crashed. I agree. Also in that chain of events was his decision to fly at all that day (if he had not done that = no crash) but it is equally wrong to say that was the cause.

The legality (or not) of landing off-airfield is a topic of concern, as is any rule breaking. Perhaps it says something about the Pilot / attitude / state of mind. I don't condone any rule breaking (and try very hard not to break any myself). But I remain of the view that the machine hit the power lines because the Pilot failed to see and avoid the power lines. These two (see and avoid) are the bits to concentrate attention on.

[Torquetalk]

John,

agreed that good airmanship is not an issue of whether the pilot is PPL or CPL. And hitting a wire is clearly the direct cause of a crash. But I think the focus on attitude right: there is an issue of people doing stuff they are not authorised to do and crashing. If they had not bent or broken the rules, the incidents in question wouldn't have happened. Good airmanship begins before the flight and involves all the decisions.

TT