It's easy to armchair-quarterback any accident. Pompous pilots say, "Well, what *I* would have done..." or "What he should have done..." Yeah, yeah...you weren't in the cockpit with him, so shut up. It's a tough situation when the aircraft does not do what you want it to do. Adrenaline starts pumping. It's hard to be as cool and calm as a test pilot, and we tend to want to just get the dang thing on the ground because we don't know what *else* is going to go wrong. The 407 did have a history of tail rotor problems.
The pilot reported that it felt like the pedals weren't connected to anything, indicating a loss of t/r pitch control. So, not a complete loss of thrust, but a "stuck pedal" situation. The report says that of the *two* levers that control the tail rotor, one was disconnected and the other was loose. Are they referring to the "dogbone" pitch-change links? If so, a running landing would have been called for, and that's what it looks like he was attempting. But it went "pear-shaped" as our British friends like to say. Oh well, we can't all be Yeager. The pilot is alive and I'm sure Bell will happily sell them a new 407.
But I'm curious. If it *was* one of the p/c dogbone links that became disconnected... Hmm. That would mean that the hardware securing the p/c links must have been both loose and unsaftied. I have to ask the uncomfortable question: Could that not have been caught on preflight? And, more importantly, would *I* have caught it on preflight?