Originally Posted by
albatross
I have heard of. a lot on 76s over the years. More than one occurred on hand over of controls for a deck landing. One poor fellow was present at 2 in 4 months. Forever after he lived with the nickname “Pops”. One thing we discovered was that the red button on the cyclic, which all thought required a good hard push, would activate at the merest touch.
Correct me if I am wrong, the S76 has a raised rim around the float deployment so as to distinguish it from the force trim release. I have heard it's real common for a freshly transitioned pilot to mix the two up. However, the float deployments on the s76 were from that button being played with on the cyclic. The AW139 requires a switch cover on the collective to be lifted fully open before access is even given to the button.