Originally Posted by
meleagertoo
Fascinting to hear all these authoratative N American statements about the hazards of autos to grass- leaving nothing to chance, too much risk of a trip-up, too much hazard etc etc...
I suppose they think that way because as they dont do them they simply don't know the reality...It seems strange that an environment so much more practical aviation minded than Europe can hold such a widespread misapprehension.
In UK and
afaik most, if not all of Europe autos are invariably done to grass, never, ever to the hard and we have no problems with it. The tripups our transatlantic cousins seem so fearful of simply don't happen. It's perhaps worth notng that many of our airfields where helo training takes place simply don't have hard runways so even if we did spend out on costly skid shoes they wouldn't be much help.
We also practice stuck pedal and simulated t/r failure to grass as well. Sure, it requires care to ensure you're straight enough on landing but it works and again we suffer no accidents, so why scrape the **** out of runways and expensice skidshoes unnecessarily?
That said, our t/r failure and stuck pedal drills may well be a bit less realistic (or perhaps mpre constrained in the parameters that can be demonstrated) but we do all understand that in the event of a real one we much prefer a hard runway.
And there are reasons to it.
In Europe, most Runways are ridiculously expensive, and airport operators are concerned about skids scratching their precious runway surfaces-to a point where helicopters are not even allowed to touch down on the runway during a normal landing...
Then:
The surfaces in most European airports i have been are smooth-this is because many airports have grass landing strips prepared for fixed wing alternate landing sites as well as glider landing areas, while glider planes need a smooth surface as well.....
And:
Most operators donīt want to invest in skid shoes....
Most US-airports i have been too (not that there are too many, so i am only talking out of my limited experience here) have a runway-thats it.
The "grass area" is just an area left from building the runway, and sometimes very rough terrain....