But you don't know how far within and what level of power margin it gives you - that is my point. Just having OGE performance isn't enough for confined area work. And his DA was about 1200'.
Practically all my hours are in Robinson products. I can assure you that he had boatloads of margin. Plus, I find it hard to believe that if you looked at any OGE performance chart for
any helicopter and saw a
5000ft DA differential between where it was operating and where it could operate OGE, as there was in this case, that you would not automatically believe that not only was there sufficient margin, but that there was a lot of it. Seriously, is there any helicopter that you know of or have flown that would not have provided sufficient margin under those conditions? And no corner cases like it was a hurricane or something. Just a plain old nice flying day like they had.
If you were doing a long transit like that in uncertain weather conditions, wouldn't you fill it to full (if you could keep within max gross). The report doesn't mention previous refuel stops but they had to go beyond where they originally planned to refuel so the chances of it being quite empty are higher and may explain why he chose to try and get in where he did.
Didn't argue that, and still not arguing that. But it does stand to reason they had to refuel somewhere in Labrador for the trip to be possible. It would have been nice to see that information in the report, and also to know how the other helicopter managed fuel and payload, too, especially since the other helicopter never did refuel at the accident site.
Poor airmanship, poor decision making and ultimately poor handling are the causes here - an inexperienced pilot biting off more than he can chew.
Again, not arguing, totally agree. But I am much more focused on the inadvertent yaw induced panic that ultimately did him and his passengers in. That might have happened nearly anywhere in this trip with similar results, without the distractions of fuel state or confined landing spaces, but those things definitely contributed and ultimately made the situation worse.