Originally Posted by
RVDT
Returning to the thread for a second.
YT is littered with Mils doing this trick.
Natural selection?
It does seem to be a very typical Mil accident with endless examples caught on video.
I was looking through the Aviation Safety Network database, and counted around 1,200 Mil8/Mil17 written off in accidents!
Wikipedia does list the model as being the highest production helicopter ever, with “17,000+”, but even taking that into account it seems a huge number of crashes. I can’t imagine any other mass produced helicopter type comes close, as a proportion of airframes manufactured.
The Bell UH1 series production is listed on Wiki as “16,000+”, but the ASN database only shows about 700 of those written off (and that does seem to include the ones lost during the Vietnam war).
(Edit - does look as if the R44 rivals the Mil for proportion lost in accidents - don’t have time to count now, but at a quick look I think the number may be around 800 losses from 6,300+ produced …)
(Edit - had a better look now, and I count about 490 R44s listed on ASN as written off - disclaimer, this is not an accurate count (by me!)