Originally Posted by
megan
...this is as close as one can get, lucky people.
Well megan, taking that ATSB graphic one step further, if the rotor hadn't been torn out of the departing EC130 and it had continued to clime at same rate, seems like only one more revolution of the rotor and it would have tangled with the rotor of the landing EC130 (extrapolation in adapted graphic below). The outcome would surely then have been twice as bad.
The video from within the landing helicopter also suggests it made a sudden pitch-up motion before the collision with the canopy shattering. I don't think that was due to sudden cyclic input. I think it may have been due to an aerodynamic interaction between both main rotors when they came into close proximity to one another? The sort of interaction that would otherwise only be experienced by rotors on helicopters like Chinook or K-Max.