Originally Posted by
roscoe1
Semantics always get in the way. Here is what I mean by root cause. Simply by parking an aircraft in the wrong place does not cause an accident. Arriving at the pad and hitting a parked aircraft....that causes an accident. There are many things that may make an accident more likley given normal human behaviour but there can only be one root cause by definition. I prefer to think of tap roots, one big root cause, rather than a dendritic mesh calling each factor a minor root clause. That allows us to focus on the action that caused the accident. If you choose to not blame the pilot because of the error someone else made by parking in the wrong place that is fine by me, but the root cause remains the same. It is always the pilot's responsibility to see and avoid obstacles, even if they are in unexpected places.
If this had been an open ramp at an airport it wouldn't have happened. If the weather hadn't reduced the pilots ability to judge her distance this wouldn't have happened.
If I couldn't tell my distance from another chopper when landing on marked company pads, I'd of done what she did and focused on the markings which are supposed to keep us appart, and crashed too.
If it was just an open ramp at the airport I'd of just set it down anywhere, no harm no foul.
The root cause was one pilot not parking where they should have combined with bad weather and another pilot trusting the safety measures which were in place, not realizing that they weren't.
Sure, she should have just set it down, and is partially to blame, but who can honestly say given the same scenario they would have done it differently?
You're coming home to a familiar company pad, the other chopper is running up, I think its safe to assume that most of us wouldn't even think that that other chopper wasn't where it should be.