Originally Posted by
rogercopy
There's no evidence that there was a passenger in a pilot seat. The helicopter's passenger compartment was able to carry 8 passengers (two benches that could fit 4 each). So most likely, all 8 passengers were in the back.
So if we're doing a what-if, let's do it properly.
I posted earlier (#301) that iexhelicopters advertised this type of helicopter for 9 passengers on their website. That makes me conclude that having a passenger up front was not unusual for their operations. I can imagine the pilot asking, "which one of you wants to ride up front today?" But there were 8 seats in the back, so possibly nobody was in the front besides the pilot.
The NTSB will have found evidence: a seat that was empty post-crash with its harness intact may have been unoccupied, if the post-crash fire allows that determination to be made. It is possible that the "the passenger did it" scenario can be ruled out based on that.
If a passenger was in a front seat, then they'd have control if they touched the stick, since this is not a fly-by-wire aircraft, right? All of the passengers are old enough to know not to do that, so the person would have to have been panicking. But the flight path does not look how I'd expect a panicked person to fly (but then I don't know how they would).
Ever since SASless posted that sensibly, the pilot would have activated the autopilot for the climb, I had been wondering if it is possible on the S76B to disengage the autopilot accidentally. The famous predecessor accident for this is Eastern Air Lines Flight 401: the crew had put their passenger jet on "altitude hold" at 2000 feet while they tried to figure out why the gear down indicator wouldn't come on, and then someone jostled the yoke and the autopilot changed over to "attitude hold" and slowly descended into the Everglades. The common factor besides the low altitude is that looking out of the window didn't help, as it was dark; and here, they probably were in cloud.
It seems unlikely to me that the pilot would have
accidentally disabled the autopilot and not noticed, even if he was distracted talking to the passengers or plotting a course, but
could a passenger have done it? What would it take on that helicopter with these avionics,
is it even possible to do accidentally?
To be very clear, I am assuming:
- a passenger was up front
- autopilot was active
- the passenger used a control
There is no evidence that any of these happened, and there are plenty of alternate explanations.