Flying loads out from between power lines

[hookes_joint]

Powerline Construction and Maintenance is very different from your basic picking up a pole and setting it somewhere else. I do it on a day to basis and have for a lot of years. There are a lot of moving parts where you operate your helicopter as a bucket truck for the linemen in fairly crappy environments.
Nobody ever plans to go out and have an accident however over the past 30 years
There have been a lot of incidents accidents due to both aircraft failures and pilot / line crew failures in the industry.

I could make this list extremely long but just to name a few,
A good friend of mine Paul Ruppert who everybody flying the Powerline industry would know as he was 20,000 line pilot for Air2, Wilson, Rogers, Source and Rotorblade died in Madison Wisconsin in a 500 engine failure 5 years back on American Transmission Property on his way to move two linemen HEC
In California Brim 600N had an Engine Out on Utility property in the last year. Same weekend Mountain Power 600N had engine out on Utility Property in Thompson Falls Montana returning from HEC flight. Haverfield are the pioneers along with a few others of this type of work and probably where you can get the best training and actual energized work experience. They have 24 MD500s, BK 117s, Hueys and Blackhawks. Over the years a lot of **** has happened unfortunately. Their Chief Pilot had a very serious engine out some time back that left the lineman dead unfortunately. This year a 500 doing board work in New Jersey ended up in the trees. Three years ago a 500 in West Virginia had an engine out pulling rope, and last year 500 had an engine out in New York returning from HEC flight. I’ve seen plenty low end governor failures over the years for Air2, Winco, Wilson in ****ty spots bringing in hot cross arms etc that could have ended extremely poorly but good work from the pilots and linemen got it down flat and needed an A&P rather than a NTSB report
I have seen less incidents accidents from Twins in the Powerline world however that is just due to the number of hours flown. Most Recently I recall a Duke Energy 429 in North Carolina go in the trees and in New York a Twin Star from Andalar Aviation hanging upside down from a 230KV with pilots and linemen jumping 100feet to there death. Just as common are crew failures such as the 600 in Pennsylvania that the linemen forgot to safety the fiber when clipping and fell out of the block on the skid. Rolling the aircraft killing both linemen. Or the lineman in Puerto Rico riding on a grapple hook rather then clipping into the AFrames and falling a hundred foot or so.
Plenty accidents from pilots too, hitting structures, wires etc and sometimes just really tragic accidents such as the 530 in Iowa that the needle fractured when pulling and took out the rotor system.

To expand a little further I have seen some crazy stuff from the heavys on construction projects, with two to three pilots up front wiping out wires, releasing poles before they are tied off etc. The mentality that’s involved in setting a 10,000lbs pole in the mountains is very different than that of a logging or fire mentality.

As a community we don’t seem to qualify our candidates correctly to work in the environment. Most utilities now have an audit similar to PGE that you need to hold a dummy 6 off the ground in a 10 foot circle and touch different elevated cones with the dummy and a certain hour requirement. Then your good to go…..
now that pilots goes off to his first job hanging marker balls at 1000feet AGL over moving water or snow or anything mid span and can’t figure out why he can’t do it and the linemen send him down the road.
At that early stage he/she would probably be fine for moving men and materials to/ from the towers over solid terrain.

I agree CRM for every worker is extremely important especially with Helicopter companies that fly external linemen or observers ie work for the contractors, where you work with different individuals every day. There’s nothing worse than showing up to an LZ and having to show your lineman how to put his fly harness on.