Originally Posted by
aa777888
Oh, hell yeah! We lost access to a prime heli destination in my neck of the woods, a very nice restaurant in an un-traditional location, because of the idiotic actions of a local tour company. The same idiots got helicopter operations restricted at a nearby airport as well. Both the restaurant and airport became the target of complaints because the tour company was doing stupid stuff over nearby residential areas and this made the locals hypersensitive to ANY helicopter operations. Rather than face a social media ****-storm, the both locations rolled over and showed their bellies.
And, yes, they were and are operating Robinson helicopters, but that is merely incidental to this issue because they are so popular (i.e. profitable). And they are much quieter than a turbine helicopter, too, not that that was any help in the situation.
Unfortunately I know who you're talking about, and in that particular case (from what I understand from people more informed than I) was that this particular owner/operator had a macho "you can't tell me what to do" attitude, and he pissed off a bunch of people with the result that we can't drop in for a lobster roll any more! Unfortunately there isn't a lot the rest of us can do when there's an operator like that, despite the fact that his actions have a negative effect on us all.
What continually angers me is that when I do recurrent training with a pilot, few of them think about the noise/annoyance they make. I can't tell you how many pilots I encounter that, when given a task of a confined area approach, only think about wind and terrain, but nothing about the noise they make, where they could come in a different way with a little cross wind and nobody would even know they had landed. Instead they fly directly over a neighborhood, and when I query them about it always get told the same thing: "nobody ever talked to me about that". So much for HAI's "Fly Friendly".
As for the R44 as a tour machine: It's probably the best suited piston machine for that job. You don't have to worry about cycles on the engine, so lots of short flights with idle time between flights is fine. Everybody has a window seat, so the view is good. In almost every respect it's easier to fly and more forgiving than an R22 (which is what a lot of the entry level tour pilots will be coming from). It's pretty fast, so if you're trying to make a loop around the island/city/whatever you can cover ground pretty fast.
I did notice in one of the quoted news articles that the pilot was a flight instructor, although it didn't say whether/how much instruction he had given. In the US, it's ridiculously easy to get a commercial helicopter certificate. The two main avenues to your first "real" pilot job is either flight instruction or tours. To think that someone with 150 hours can be out there flying with 3 blissfully ignorant (of the dangers) passengers just gives me shivers. And yet, when I had 150 hours I probably thought I was a pretty good stick. You look back on stuff like that and shake your head at how much you didn't know. And not only about flying! As a new pilot you're totally unprepared on how to deal with management. Few new pilots are prepared to push back on an owner who's taking risks and cutting corners. They don't have the experience to know where to draw the line. And lets face it, the passengers would probably be horrified to learn what a new pilot is willing to put up with to get that hours building job.