PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Enstrom F28 crashes at Pennsylvania fairground
Old 1st Oct 2019, 18:06
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aa777888
 
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On a more rational note, and ignoring the Robinson jibes: with regard to @Ascend-Charlie's point about where are you going to go when you get hit with an auto at low altitude, the only answer anyone can give is "The best of the bad options". Because these operations tend to be in either built up areas (in which case it will not be as dark as a cow's insides), or they tend to be out in the countryside, which means the trees (at least around here it does). Because it's very unlikely you are going to have any conveniently empty farm fields or the like.

Certainly one should be making intelligent choices about where night rides are going to be offered. An area that is very dark is not a good area for a lot of obvious reasons, not just emergencies. The only night ride concession I'm aware of around these parts involves an LZ in a ball field in the middle of a small city and generally runs up and down the river that goes through the city. The area is well lighted. They use an R44 with pop-out floats. It's actually as good as it gets, day or night, i.e. an auto will likely end up on the floats in the river (a lazy river, not a raging torrent) and not balled up on some residential street.

Finally, most most turbines are not economically viable choices for the vast majority of these operations. A twin would be doubly bad (ha, a pun!) At per seat rates of between $30 and $40 USD, as has already been pointed out you need to be in the air 80% of the time. To unload/load say 6 folks safely from a turbine ship takes too long and requires too large a ground staff lest you lose physical control of one of your passengers on the ground.
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