Indeed tough call. You have to imagine when he activated the floats and he hears a bang and sees yellow pop up all around him that he has assumed the floats had deployed correctly. The worse fear would be to pull the handle and have nothing happen at all, silence.
We have always taught, to get the floats out early rather than late for a few reasons. One reason being if you have the choice of a large open area of water for an easy auto vs a tight spot on the land and you hit the floats and nothing happens. Then you at least have some potential altitude for a change of spot, that field you didn't think you would fit the aircraft into without a more dramatic flare/pilot skill suddenly just became a little more doable vs a no float water landing.
If the water is still the only option you have then you might try to force it to the shore, even if that shore is not a flat open area or any number of things that your pilot mind is able to come up with in 15-20 seconds or more. Finding out at 40-50 feet that the floats have chosen not to deploy is going to be a real panic maker and you have quite literally zero options, you are along for the ride.
These Apical floats have a pull cable system and you need to shear a pin in the handle, this ends up being a two hand operation. Left hand comes off the collective to hold the cyclic, right hand grabs a hold of the handle pull with all you got. Its a solid 45 degrees or more of throw you need to pull them full travel. That's not a move you want to be doing at 40-50 feet either. The book will tell you the floats will want to take about 10 rpms off the rotor speed. Again if you have still a few hundred feet of altitude to play with and the rotor at 390 with a touch of pitch check in the collective,..... pop the floats.....loud noises, covers go flying, yellow appears, rotor decreases slowly to 380 as you rob the driving region of airflow....apply a touch of down collective and they come right back up, the lose of rotor rpm from float deployment is not a major concern.
Only concern most manufactures have is high speed flight with floats deployed and then getting it out of trim in a big way, the machine may attempt to tuck on you. The video shows all of the right side floats inflated, the back ones we would later see from images of it upside down were squishy, not firm. The video did show the very front of the front right float flopped over and not firmly inflated.
I don't know if in those last few hundred feet if I would have turned my head fully down and to the right so check the firmness of the bags. I would have seen the big ball of yellow emerge out of the corner of my eye when I pulled the handle and probably said something along the lines of, "well at least the floats deployed." His mind must have had so much going on at the bottom end that i don't think I would have been able to pick up and been aware enough that my right side bags were not as firm as they should be. Of course pretty much anywhere in NYC an engine failure means you are going to the water and you have to do whatever it takes to makes sure you make the rivers.
There are a few places where sometimes you have other options but those are few and far between. So even at 800' if he became instantly aware of the floats not being fully inflated on his side there is nothing he could do. You have no options at 800' descending over the east river to do anything other than picking where you are getting wet.
Hind sight will always be 20/20, a brand new pilot trying to do an air restart might have needed to look down to grab the FFCL to attempt a restart and might have caught visually that the emergency fuel shut off was pulled up and gotten it down earlier and had enough time for a restart. In this case a more experienced pilot is eyes outside trying to find a spot to land and reaches down by muscle memory to the FFCL to do the restart and does not look down and as such misses the emergency fuel cut off. Making decisions on if central park was a safe spot or not. Deciding to go to the river and turning the aircraft around to aim for it. Then making absolutely sure he would clear the buildings on the upper east side he droops the rotor to get better range out of the machine. Telling his passengers to get back up in the their seats. Two mayday calls, first one is stepped on, second one LGA proved to be useless. Then once he knows he is clearing the buildings and he's not going to be sliding down 1st avenue he remembers to get the floats out, bang! Yellow appears in peripheral vision, thank god. From there i can only assume focusing on not screwing up the bottom end and falling from 100 feet. I'm sure the first time trying to judge his flare and collective pull to flat water as the sun is setting behind the buildings made the seat cushion get sucked up into you know where. Finally hit the water and surprise the aircraft instantly rolls rights and whatever thoughts you had for what you were going to do when you hit the water are gone. Watching the video of the landing that was shot from behind shows the aircraft from impact skids level rolling to 45 degrees in 5 seconds, then another 5 seconds the aircraft is at 90 degrees, another 5 seconds aircraft fully inverts. The video continues for another 6 seconds and the pilot is still not out of the aircraft. So he was face under for at least 16 seconds before the video cuts.
As a pilot flying over water you do put a certain amount of trust in the float system, that as long as you can get the aircraft safely to the water, pull off a decent flare and not auger in at 70 knots you trust those floats will fire and you will be upright. There is a great video out there from Apical testing float systems on many types of aircraft. A few aircraft hitting with similar splashdowns to the accident aircraft. Aircraft would have bobbed right back up and been perfectly fine. The last engine failure over NYC was a long ranger on a tour when the engine quite literally blew up and the pilot made a great auto, the floats fired and the aircraft was upright in the water. Passengers never even got their feet wet. They towed it to the dock, craned it on a barge and the aircraft is still flying around after getting repaired. Having that vital emergency piece of equipment fail on you will forever stick in your mind. You will second guess your decision not to try and force it down in central park among the people for the rest of your life. I know most of us who fly will do everything they can to not injure/kill someone on the ground. If the scenario is you take it to central park and barely make it and your botched auto takes out 4 people on the ground but all of your passengers walk away or.... you auto to the river and your 5 passengers drown which one would you take? I've always felt that climbing into an aircraft you have a certain amount of assumed risk, the person walking in central park did not sign up for a helicopter to fall out of the sky and take them out.
Last edited by surfandturf; 28th Mar 2018 at 02:20.