Falsify Aircraft Documents and Go To Jail!

[SASless]

One of the Two Carson Helicopters Managers implicated in the falsification of Aircraft Performance documents has been found Guilty and will be testifying against the other Indicted Person.

This conviction carries the risk of Twenty Years in Prison.

I hope the rest of the US Helicopter Industry takes clear note of the risk one takes when doing up bogus Aircraft Documentation.

Some good folks died as result of the criminal acts.


Guilty plea entered in 2008 fatal copter crash near Weaverville » Redding Record Searchlight (http://www.redding.com/news/2013/sep/24/guilty-plea-entered-2008-fatal-copter-crash-near-w/)

2008 08/05 CA Iron 44 (http://www.wlfalwaysremember.org/incident-lists/202-iron-44.html)

[212man]

Meanwhile, the co-pilot walks away with $170m from a completely spurious law suit against GE!

[AnFI]

Wow 212.. is that true?

It takes one hell of a lot of turnover to clear $170m dollars - this is bad for aviation.

[John Eacott]

Thread from earlier this year: We should not point fingers. (http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/364596-we-should-not-point-fingers.html)

[212man]

Wow 212.. is that true?

In paraphrase, it is. The point being - was it the engines' FCUs (I don't believe) so, or the falsified documents (I don't believe that either)?

A Portland jury ruled last year that a problem with an engine was responsible for the crash. Jurors reached their verdict after the pilot who survived and the widow of the one who was killed sued General Electric for $177 million, alleging the company knew the engines it made for the Sikorsky S-61N helicopter had a design flaw.

[Thomas coupling]

212: The article reports that Carson (the two individuals involved) fiddled the performance charts and figures for their aircraft, so as to win the contract. In so doing, these two individuals then passed this 'duff' data onto the pilots to work with. The a/c was almost 4000lbs overweight when it took off!!!!
Now I wonder why it subsequently failed to clear the trees during its transition to fwd flight:ugh:

I can't for the sake of me understand why GE were fined? Where does it officially record that the engine(s) were dodgy also.

Both these men should be sent down for decades after what they did. And yes let this be a message to all others of this ilk: You will be found out and you will suffer the consequences........

Appalling set of circumstances finally coming to an end........:mad:

[212man]

I wasn't condoning their actions in any way.

The a/c was almost 4000lbs overweight when it took off!!!!

For an aircraft that weighs nearly 15,000lb, that sounds a little out! I'd have to go back through the NTSB docket documents, but I thought it was an order of a few hundred pounds, not thousands?

[500e]

From Gordys post on another thread


15) In the GE/Sikorsky prepared "worst case" simulation, the helicopter was alleged to have weighed 19,008 lbs. The Sikorsky performance charts, even using the "stock" rotor blades instead of the composite, high performance blades on N612AZ, show that at this altitude, temperature and wind, the helicopter could lift over 19,100 lbs. Assuming every fact in favour of the NTSB/GE/Sikorsky simulations, N612AZ could have and did fly from H-44 until the No. 2 engine failed.

[Thomas coupling]

A National Transportation Safety Board investigation showed the Sikorsky S-61N helicopter weighed more than 19,000 pounds when pilots tried to take off from a mountaintop clearing during the Iron 44 wildfire in Shasta-Trinity National Forest. If Forest Service guidelines had been followed, investigators said, the weight shouldn't have exceeded 15,840 pounds.

The National Transportation Safety Board determines the probable cause(s) of this ACC as follows:

The following actions by Carson Helicopters: 1) the intentional understatement of the helicopter's empty weight, 2) the alteration of the power available chart to exaggerate the helicopter's lift capability, and 3) the practice of using unapproved above-minimum specification torque in performance calculations that, collectively, resulted in the pilots relying on performance calculations that significantly overestimated the helicopter's load-carrying capacity and did not provide an adequate performance margin for a successful takeoff; and insufficient oversight by the U.S. Forest Service and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Contributing to the accident was the failure of the flight crewmembers to address the fact that the helicopter had approached its maximum performance capability on their two prior departures from the accident site because they were accustomed to operating at the limit of the helicopter’s performance.



The pilots were complying with the charts/data given to them by Carson (MAUM: 19100lbs) but the actual limit for this task was 15840lbs. They took off 3160lbs over weight. Might that be the reason why the engine crapped out?

[dubbleyew eight]

thomas coupling that is nonsense.
an engine will not crap out because the aircraft is overloaded.
all that will occur is that the flight performance will be less than predicted.
engines only deliver the power that they deliver.

[SASless]

There is more to the Engine Lawsuit than meets the eye....and is certainly a questionable verdict.

There was some suggestion there was a conflict of interest re the NTSB Investigator and his Wife's employment or something like that as I recall (not for sure exactly but there was something like that involved.).

The overhaul of the FCU was done by Columbia Helicopters if I remember correctly.

The Civil Case is on Appeal last I heard so the payment has not been made.

Carson Helicopters also used some unusual Take Off Performance Procedures that allowed the use of "contingency power" which also played a role in the crash.

If the USFS went through the Weight and Balance Records of all the Bell 206B's that they have ever contracted for.....they would probably find some more duff W&B records.

The problem with the 206 was the payload requirement in the Contracts used by the USFS....and it was very hard to get your aircraft light enough to provide the contract payload.

Dummying up Paperwork was not a new thing in the USFS Helicopter Contracting business.....and the USFS knew that.

That was a game I refused to play.

If I signed my name to a Document....it was legit.....and I slept much better at night as a result. We lost some business perhaps but my mind was at rest.

[Thomas coupling]

W8: Sorry about that, I only have 3000hrs on S61 types so didnt know what I was talking about. I forgot that when engines hit "max cont" they do so for a finite amount of time, usually seconds (as per the performance charts) and then they kinda 'shed blades' especially if this is done time and time again.
Now let's see: Carson was showing one set of MAUM limits and the pilot assumed these were correct, but in reality these limits were way over the true limit of the a/c. So unknowingly, the pilot culd have hauled thousands of pounds of load over limit (3168lbs to be exact) and on this day hauled approx 567lbs over the limit. The engines must have been screaming.[Admittedly they were topping out in accordance with the OEM's demands thru the governor but eventually you can only top out 'x' dozen times before the fir trees at the compressor blade roots grow a couple of thou too much and "robert's your mother's brother" :(

SAS: The NTSB's wife was the CEO of the company that fixed and assembled FCU's....guess what, to this day the FCU of the 'duff' engine (or important components thereof) are still missing.............:confused:

The GE award of $70million dollars (it being 43% of the alleged blame for the crash) is most definitely a red herring and rest assured the appeal will re-evaluate this in light of the overwhelming evidence now before the CRIMINAL courts that is coming in April 2014. The Carson exec will 'hang' for this...watch this space.